Hh-- 

iiii-i;-.,. 

Portraits  of  the  Seventeenth  Century 

Historic  and  Literary 

By  C.  a.  SAINTE-BEUVE 

Translated  by  Katharine  P.  Wormeley 


Two  Parts,  8°.     With  about  jo  illustrations.     Sold  separately 

PART  ONE 

Cardinal  de  Richelieu  Bussy-Rabutin 

Due  de  Rohan  Tallemant  des  Reaux 

Cardinal  Mazarin  Abbe  de  Ranee 

Due  de  La  Rochefoucauld  La  Grande  Mademoiselle 

Duehesse  de  Longueville  Comtesse  de  La  Fayette 

Cardinal  de  Retz  Duehesse  d'Orleans 

Ninon  de  I'Enelos  Louis  XIV. 
Louise  de  la  Valliere 


PART  T 

wo 

History  of  the  French  Academy 

Bossuet 

Corneille 

Boileau 

Mile,  de  Seudery 

Racine 

Moliere 

Mme.  de  Caylus 

La  Fontaine 

Fenelon 

Pascal 

Comte  Antoine  Hamilton 

Mme,  de  Sevigne 

P. 

The  Princesse  des  Ursins 

G. 

PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York 

London 

FRANCOIS   DE  SALIQNAC  DE  LA  MOTHE   FENEL.ON.    Frontispiece. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


Portraits 

of  the 

Seventeenth  Century 

Historic  and  Literary 

By 

C.  A.  Sainte-Beuve 

Translated  by 

Katharine  P.  Wormeley 

-K  • 


History  of  the  French  Academy  —  Corneille — Mademoiselle  de 
Scud6ry  —  Moliere  —  La  Fontaine  —  Pascal  —  Madame  de  S6- 
vign6 —  Bossuet  —  Boileau  —  Racine  —  Madame  de  Caylus  — 
F6nelon  —  Comte  Antoine  Hamilton — The  Princesse  des  Ursins 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

Zbc  Unlcl^crbocher  press 

1904 


II I  lustrations 

PAGE 

Francois  de  Salignac  de  la  Mothe  Fe- 

fielOll       ....        Frontispiece 
From  a  steel  engraving. 

Corneille 32 

From  an  engraving  of  the  painting  by  Lebrun. 

Mademoiselle  Madeleine  de  Scudery     .      58 

From  an  old  print. 

Moliere 88 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

La  Fontaine 144 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

Blaise  Pascal 1 70 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

Madame  de  Sevigne      .        .        .        .192 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

Comtesse  de  Grignan    ....     208 

From  a  steel  engraving. 


vi  HUustrations 

PAGE 

Jacques  Benigne  Bossuet       .        .        .220 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

Nicolas  Boileau 248 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

Racine 286 

From  a  steel  engraving. 

Madame  de  Caylus      .        .        .        .318 

After  the  painting  by  G.  Staal. 

Comte  Antoine  Hamilton    .        .        .     388 

From  an  old  print. 

Princesse  des  Ursins     ....    408 

From  an  old  print. 


I. 

Ibtstori?  of  tbe  jfrencb  Bcabem^* 


VOL.   II. — I. 


I. 

Ibistori?  of  tbe  ^vcncb  aca&emi?. 

THE  short  history  that  M.  Pellisson  has  given  of 
the  beginning  of  this  Association,  in  the  form 
of  a  "  Letter  to  a  Friend,"  is  in  reality  one  of 
the  most  finished  and  most  agreeable  essays  in  our  lan- 
guage, a  rare  and  perfect  example,  that  shows  better 
than  all  definitions  what  it  is  to  write  with  elegance 
and  purity  in  French.  There  are,  and  there  were  in 
the  days  of  Pellisson,  two  sorts  of  elegance  and  ur- 
banity in  conversing  and  in  writing:  one  lively,  more 
natural,  easier,  more  familiar,  also  more  coloured;  de- 
rived from  commerce  with  the  great  world  and  the 
Court  by  those  who  were  born  and  bred  to  them  from 
infancy,  that,  for  instance,  of  Saint  Evremond,  Bussy, 
Clerembault,  La  Rochefoucauld,  Retz:  —  the  other 
more  studied,  formed  in  the  library  and  by  reading, 
or  by  assiduous  attendance  in  certain  brilliant  circles, 
and  by  intercourse  with  the  best-qualified  literary 
personages ;  this  last  form  of  urbanity  is  that  of  Con- 
rart  and  Vaugelas;  in  it  Pellisson  excels,  and  is,  above 
all  others,  the  perfect  model  of  his  time. 

If,  after  reading  some  natural  and  living  work  of  that 
period,  the  Memoirs  of  Cardinal  de  Retz  for  example, 

3 


4  Ibistors  ot  tbe  ffrencb  Bcabem^. 

Pellisson  is  immediately  taken  up,  what  I  mean  to 
say  will  be  understood.  We  have  to  do  with  an  ex- 
cellent writer  in  him,  but  a  writer  of  another  species, 
of  a  wholly  different  stamp,  of  another  origin  and 
genus.  He  is  not  of  those  who,  like  Retz,  have  seen 
all  and  essayed  all  in  action,  and,  daring  all,  risk  say- 
ing all,  making  to  themselves  a  language  in  their  own 
likeness,  which  they  alone  can  speak  with  a  certain 
air,  well  assured  as  they  are  of  being  always  of  a 
good  school  and  a  good  race.  Pellisson  is  one  of 
those  authors  by  profession  who,  having  begun  by 
the  pen,  never  lose  it  from  sight,  and  would  prefer  to 
cut  themselves  short,  like  Fontanes,  of  ideas  or  inci- 
dents to  relate,  if  they  thought  they  could  not  gather 
and  present  them  with  absolute  correctness  and  perfect 
elegance. 

Born  at  Beziers  in  1624,  of  a  Protestant  family  very 
distinguished  in  the  law,  he  was  educated  in  the 
South,  and  was  twenty-six  years  of  age  when  he 
came  to  Paris,  where  he  was  introduced  into  the  lit- 
erary world  under  the  auspices  of  Conrart.  It  was 
then  that  he  composed,  under  the  form  of  a  "Letter 
to  a  Friend,"  this  Narrative,  or  History  of  the  French 
Academy,  which  he  was  admitted  to  read  before  it  in 
full  assemblage.  The  approbation  the  paper  won  was 
so  great  that  the  first  vacant  place  in  the  Associa- 
tion was  voted  to  Pellisson,  and,  meanwhile,  he  was 
allowed  to  be  present  at  the  meetings  in  the  capacity 
of  "supernumerary";  which  has  never  happened  ex- 


Ibfstorp  ot  tbe  ifrencb  Bca&em^.         5 

cept  to  him.  He  thus  found  himself  the  object  of  a 
unique  exception ;  he  was  the  only  man  of  letters  to 
whom  the  Academy  did  not  fear  to  make  a  promise 
in  advance. 

He  was  thus  placed  under  the  very  best  conditions 
to  write  this  narrative;  beside  the  Academy  but  not 
as  yet  of  it,  and  in  the  confidence  of  the  best-informed 
witnesses.  It  is  thanks  to  him  that  we  are  able  to 
know  the  Golden  Age,  the  Evander  age,  of  this  much- 
lauded  Association,  which  was  soon  to  have  its  Louvre 
and  its  Capitol. 

During  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  nu- 
merous efforts  were  made  in  France  for  the  culture 
and  perfecting  of  the  language,  natural  and  spontane- 
ous efforts  of  little  societies,  or  coteries,  grammatical 
and  literary.  After  the  coming  of  Malherbe  a  general 
impulse  in  this  direction  was  felt.  One  of  these 
little  societies,  that  of  MM.  Conrart,  Godeau,  de 
Gombauld,  de  Malleville,  de  Serisay,  de  Cerisy,  Habert 
(Chapelain  came  a  little  later),  assembled  weekly  at 
Conrart's,  whose  lodging  was  the  most  central.  They 
read  to  one  another  the  works  they  composed;  these 
they  criticised  or  encouraged.  "The  conferences 
were  followed  sometimes  by  a  promenade,  sometimes 
by  a  collation."  During  three  or  four  years  the  meet- 
ings continued  thus  in  perfect  obscurity  and  freedom. 

"  When  they  talk  to-day  of  that  first  period  of  the  Academy,"  says 
Pellisson,  "they  speak  of  it  as  a  Golden  Age  during  which,  in  all  the 
innocence  and  freedom  of  the  first  centuries,  without  noise  or  pomp, 


6  Ibistori?  of  tbe  jfrencb  Hca^emp. 

without  other  laws  than  those  of  friendship,  they  enjoyed  together  all 
that  association  of  minds  and  reasonable  living  can  give  that  is  sweetest 
and  most  charming." 

Secrecy  was  pledged  and  kept :  Qui  sapit  in  tacito 
gaiideat  ille  sinu.  One  of  them  (M.  de  Malleville) 
was  the  first  to  infringe  it;  he  spoke  rather  indis- 
creetly of  the  conferences  and  of  what  was  there 
discussed  to  Faret,  author  of  the  Honnete  Homme, 
who  brought  his  book  to  him,  then  just  printed. 
Faret  talked  to  others.  Des  Maretz  and  Boisrobert 
were  informed  of  the  meetings,  and  asked  to  be 
admitted.  The  members  could  not  refuse  Boisrobert, 
a  great  favourite  of  Cardinal  Richelieu  and  his  chief 
amuser.  As  the  latter  well  knew  that  rather  jovial 
tales  and  literary  news  were  most  likely  to  amuse  his 
patron,  he  did  not  fail  to  entertain  him  with  the 
proceedings  of  the  little  company;  and  gave  him  so 
favourable  an  idea  of  it,  that  Richelieu  conceived  a 
scheme  to  adopt  the  association  and  constitute  it  into 
a  formal  body,  for  use  as  the  literary  decoration  of 
the  reign. 

For  Richelieu  (let  us  in  our  turn  and  after  so  many 
others,  do  him  this  homage),  had  in  him  that  flame, 
that  religion  of  Letters  which  Pericles,  the  Augustuses, 
and  the  Maecenases  had  in  their  day  to  so  high  a 
degree;  he  believed  that  truly  noble  and  great  things 
would  not  continue  to  be  regarded  as  such  for  ever, 
except  in  so  far  as  they  were  consecrated  by  that 
religion;  and  that  the  genius  of  Letters  is  the  neces- 


1b!stori?  of  tbe  ffrencb  Bcabem^.         7 

sary  and  indirectly  auxiliary  ornament,  the  magnifi- 
cent and  most  honourable  decoration  of  the  genius 
of  States.  If  he  had  less  taste  than  the  great  men  of 
Greece  and  Rome  whom  I  have  just  cited,  that  came 
of  the  hindrances  of  his  epoch,  of  his  education,  and 
of  a  vice  of  his  mind  v/hich  was  given  to  a  species  of 
pedantry;  but  though  he  transgressed  in  the  minor 
detail  he  was  not  mistaken  in  his  public  view  of  litera- 
ture, nor  in  the  value  of  the  institution  he  sought  to 
establish  for  the  service  and  pleasure  of  all. 

After  having  subdued  and  decapitated  the  nobles, 
checkmated  the  Protestants  as  a  party  in  the  State, 
foiled  and  humbled  the  factions  in  the  royal  family; 
after  making  head  throughout  all  Europe  against  the 
House  of  Austria,  counteracting  its  prominence  by 
several  armies  in  the  field  and  on  the  sea,  he  had  the 
intelligence  to  comprehend  that  there  was  something 
to  do  for  the  French  language,  to  polish,  adorn,  au- 
thorise it,  render  it  "the  most  perfect  of  modern  lan- 
guages," transport  into  it  that  empire,  that  universal 
ascendancy  once  possessed  by  the  Latin  language,  and 
which,  since  then,  other  languages  had  seemed  to 
usurp  transiently,  rather  than  actually  possess.  The 
Spanish  language  at  that  time  was  usurping  this  sem- 
blance of  authority;  so  that  even  on  that  ground  he 
would  still  combat  the  House  of  Austria.  But  for  the 
execution  of  such  an  idea  he  needed  choice  auxiliaries; 
a  happy  chance  threw  them,  already  collected,  in  his 
way.     He  stretched  forth  his  hand  and  said  to  that 


8         Ibtstor^  of  tbe  jfrencb  aca&em^. 

little  gathering  which  thought  itself  so  obscure:  "I 
adopt  you;  belong  to  me,  belong  to  the  State!  " 

On  the  other  side,  it  is  piquant  and  almost  touching 
to  see  how  this  offer  of  protection  and  aggrandisement 
alarmed,  at  first,  those  worthy  men,  sincere  lovers  of 
private  life  and  studious  leisure;  they  were  strongly 
tempted  to  decline  so  great  an  honour.  But  the  wise 
and  prudent  Chapelain  remarked  that  inasmuch  as, 
unfortunately,  their  conferences  had  come  to  light, 
they  no  longer  had  liberty  of  choice;  that  this  honour- 
able offer  of  protection,  coming  from  such  a  height, 
was  an  order;  and  to  withdraw  from  the  good  inten- 
tions of  the  Cardinal  would  be  to  incur  his  enmity: 
Spretceque  injuria  formce.  The  reasons  presented  on 
this  occasion,  and  those  produced  in  other  and  pri- 
vate discussions  are  given  by  Pellisson  in  little  indi- 
rect discourses  imitated  from  those  of  Livy,  and  not 
less  suitable.  The  Cardinal  was  therefore  thanked, 
surprise  and  gratitude  mingling  in  the  reply,  and  the 
little  company  placed  itself  at  his  disposition.  This 
took  place  early  in  1634. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  history  of  the  Academy  has 
not  been  continued  on  the  plan  and  in  the  detail 
of  Pellisson.  That  history,  as  I  conceive  it,  is  now 
rather  difficult  to  write,  for  want  of  sufficient  private 
documents;  nevertheless,  I  do  not  think  it  impossible. 
I  speak,  of  course  of  the  old  Academy,  destroyed  in 
1793;  as  to  the  new  Academy,  documents  and  re- 
collections abound.     The  important  point  would  be 


HDistor^  of  tbe  frencb  Bca^em^.         9 

to  mark  carefully  the  different  periods,  the  different 
ages,  and  the  various  influences  which  the  Association 
has  undergone  or  has  exercised,  the  currents  of  mind 
that  have  reigned  within  it,  and  through  which  it  has 
found  itself  more  or  less  in  harmony  and  in  commu- 
nication with  the  tone  and  opinion  of  the  outside. 

It  has  proved  an  almost  general  rule  that  the  Acad- 
emy, after  a  period  when  it  was  completely  on  the 
level  of  exterior  literary  opinion,  and  represented  the 
aspects  most  in  view  and  most  flourishing,  has  low- 
ered its  level  or  retarded  its  progress.  This  came  of 
the  duration  and  longevity  of  its  members.  For  ex- 
ample, under  Richelieu  and  from  its  origin,  it  was 
composed,  naturally,  of  all  that  was  best  and  most 
highly  considered  among  men  of  letters,  Balzac  at 
their  head,  and  Chapelain.  But,  by  the  very  fact  that 
Chapelain  lived  on  and  survived  himself,  there  came  a 
moment  under  Louis  XIV,  and  at  the  finest  period  of 
his  reign,  when  we  note  in  the  breast  of  the  Acad- 
emy a  slightly  old-fashioned  and  behind-the-age  spirit. 
Not  only  were  Moliere  and  La  Fontaine  not  of  it,  but 
Boileau  was  not,  until  Louis  XIV,  having  asked  him  a 
question  on  the  subject,  heard  with  amazement  of  his 
absence. 

For  the  very  reason  that  the  school  of  Chapelain 
and  Des  Maretz  lived  out  its  course  of  nature  and 
prolonged  itself  by  its  choice  of  successors,  Boileau 
was  never  completely  at  home  in  the  Academy; 
he  was  never  satisfied   with  it,  and  could  not  speak 


lo        ibtstor^  ot  tbe  JFtrencb  Bca^emp. 

of  it  without  an  epigram  ;  he  was  almost  of  the  opin- 
ion of  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  who  was  reproached  for 
not  regarding  it  as  "a  serious  body."  The  fact  is, 
the  old  academicians,  against  whom  Boileau  in  the 
beginning  had  contended,  lived  long  enough  to  admit 
much  younger  academicians  who,  from  the  start, 
were  opposed  in  their  turn  to  Boileau,  already  old  and 
mature.  I  know,  of  course,  that  there  were  grand 
classic  days,  when  Racine  solemnly  eulogised  Cor- 
neille,  when  La  Bruyere  was  received  ;  but  the  or- 
dinary routine  of  the  Academy  was  the  reading  of  a 
poem  by  Perrault,  a  dissertation  by  Charpentier,  an 
idyll  by  Fontenelle,  and,  after  a  while,  a  fable  or 
a  translation  in  verse  by  La  Motte.  The  latter,  as 
soon  as  he  belonged  to  the  Academy,  became,  by  his 
assiduity,  his  politeness,  his  amiable,  social  spirit,  one 
of  the  most  essential  members,  and  the  dearest  to  the 
heart  of  the  company.  Through  him,  and  through 
Fontenelle,  the  Academy  found  itself  once  more  well 
in  advance,  and  at  the  head  of  all  literary  questions 
under  the  Regency. 

But  after  that,  and  until  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  time  and  effort  were  needed  to  raise  the 
Academy  from  the  selections  made  under  the  stag- 
nating influence  of  Cardinal  Fleury,  and  to  bring  it 
once  more  into  harmony  and  true  alliance  with  the 
literary  and  philosophical  powers  active  in  the  world. 
Voltaire  did  not  belong  to  the  Academy  until  1646, 
that  is,  very  late,  like  Boileau  ;  but  once  in  it,  though 


IbtstoriP  of  tbe  ifrencb  Hcat)em^.        n 

absent  and  living  out  of  the  country,  he  ruled  and 
governed  it,  which  Boileau  never  did.  Duclos  first, 
and  then  d'Alembert  were  his  chief  prime-ministers. 

M.  Paul  Mesnard,  in  a  "History  of  the  Academy," 
(which  has  no  other  fault  than  that  of  being  too  much 
abridged),  has  sketched  these  epochs  and  these  in- 
terior divisions  very  well.  He  indicates  a  chapter 
that  ought  to  be  written  about  the  influence  of 
women  on  the  elections  to  the  Academy — Mme.  de 
Lambert,  Mme.  de  Tencin,  Mme.  Geoffrin,  Mile,  de 
Lespinasse,  etc. — there  is  another  that  ought  also  to 
be  written,  on  the  imperceptible  directing  influences 
of  the  perpetual  secretaries.  A  good  perpetual  secre- 
tary, without  making  much  stir  in  its  interior,  gives 
motion  to  the  machine  and  enables  it  to  go  as  if  of  itself. 
We  still  have  some  of  that  kind;  and  we  notice  very 
quickly  when,  by  chance,  they  are  absent  or  lacking. 
The  saddest  period  of  the  Academy  in  the  eighteenth 
century  was  that  of  the  insignificant  perpetual  secre- 
taries Dacier,  Du  Bois,  Houtteville,  Mirabaud.  In 
their  day  the  company  slumbered  or  drifted. 

In  spite  of  the  brilliant  role  that  the  Academy  was 
able  to  play  in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
which  made  it  a  sovereign  organ  of  opinion,  especially 
about  the  time  of  the  accession  of  Louis  XVI  until 
1788,  I  do  not  think  that  it  has  ever,  altogether  and  at 
all  points,  fulfilled  the  hope  of  its  founder,  Richelieu; 
it  has  done  both  more  and  less  than  he  desired.  Let 
me  explain: 


12        Iblstorg  of  tbe  jfrencb  Hca&em^. 

It  is  not  on  the  Letters  Patent  of  his  institution  that 
I  lay  the  blame;  and  besides,  I  do  not  assume  to  lay 
any  blame  at  all,  but  merely  to  state  facts  accurately 
and  draw  conclusions.  The  Letters  Patent  of  1635 
and  the  project  which  preceded  them  explained,  in 
very  clear  terms,  the  name  of  the  studies  and  the  ob- 
ject of  the  work  of  the  Academy,  namely: 

"  The  hope  that  our  language,  more  perfect  already  than  any  other 
living  language,  may  succeed  to  Latin,  as  Latin  did  to  Greek,  if  more 
care  be  taken  than  has  been  hitherto  of  elocution  ;  which  is  not,  in 
truth,  the  whole  of  eloquence,  but  a  very  good  and  very  important 
part  of  it";  and,  for  that  object,  it  was  necessary  "to  establish  cer- 
tain rules,  and,  primarily,  to  establish  a  certain  usage  of  words,  and  to 
regulate  terms  and  phrases  by  an  ample  Dictionary  and  a  precise  Gram- 
mar, which  would  give  to  the  language  a  part  of  the  ornaments  that 
it  lacked,  so  that  later  it  might  acquire  the  rest  through  a  Rhctorique 
and  a  Poetique,  that  should  be  composed  to  serve  as  regulators  to 
those  who  wished  to  write  in  verse  or  prose:  that,  in  this  way,  the 
French  language  might  be  rendered  not  only  elegant,  but  capable  of 
treating  of  all  Arts  and  Sciences,  beginning  with  that  most  noble  of 
all  the  arts,  eloquence,"  etc.,  etc. 

Of  all  this  and  of  the  other  articles  of  its  first  pro- 
gramme, the  Academy  accomplished  nothing  but  its 
Dictionary.  Add  to  that,  if  you  like,  Vaugelas's 
Remarques  which  the  Academy  publicly  adopted, 
and  perhaps  also  the  French  grammar  of  Regnier 
Desmarais,  its  perpetual  secretary,  who  made  it  semi- 
officially. This  was  enough,  rightly  viewed  ;  and  in 
that  direction  the  Academy  has  done,  in  course  of 
time,  what  it  was  commissioned  to  do.  As  for  the 
Rhetorique  and  the  Poetique,  it   prudently  confined 


Ibistorp  of  tbe  jfrencb  aca&em^.        13 

itself  to  the  Letter  of  Fenelon,  which  it  could  show  to 
friends  and  enemies  as  a  charming  series  of  questions 
and  projects,  every  one  being  allowed  to  build  and 
dream  as  he  chose  on  the  engaging  words  of  the 
least  dogmatic  of  masters. 

But  Richelieu  meant  that  his  French  Academy 
should  be  something  more;  he  meant  to  make  it 
the  judge  of  all  the  noted  works  that  appeared ;  to 
constitute  it  a  grand  jury,  as  we  say  now,  a  high  liter- 
ary tribunal,  expected  to  give  its  judgment  on  all  the 
important  current  productions  that  came  before  the 
public.  1  imagine  to  myself  a  living  and  ever-present 
Richelieu:  he  would  ask  the  Academy  its  opinion 
on  Phedre  for  example,  on  Athalie  the  morning 
after  the  first  representation  of  those  famous  plays,  in 
the  very  quick  of  the  discussions  they  excited.  He 
would  ask  the  same  on  all  the  great  poetic  works  that 
led  to  schism  and  controversy  (I  am  supposing  a  per- 
manent and  immortal  Richelieu);  he  would,  in  short, 
exact  that  learned  men  should  speak  out;  not  waiting 
for  the  verdict  of  time,  but  forestalling  it,  regulating  it 
to  some  extent,  and  giving  their  reasons;  leading  the 
tide  of  public  opinion  and  not  following  it.  Was  this 
possible  ?  was  it  desirable  ?  That  is  another  question, 
and  when  I  say  that  the  Academy  in  this  has  not 
fulfilled  its  vocation  and  has  not  acted  in  the  direction 
indicated  by  its  founder,  I  am  not  blaming  it.  No  one 
does  things  of  that  sort  unless  they  are  not  only 
authorised    but   forced   and  constrained  to  do  them. 


14        Ibistors  of  tbe  ifrencb  Hca&emi?. 

No  one  plunges,  from  mere  gaiety  of  heart,  into  the 
melee  of  contemporaneous  discussions,  even  if  he 
flatters  himself  he  can  rule  them.  Men  are  not  so 
ready  to  confer  upon  themselves  such  extraordinary 
commissions,  always  thorny,  and  which  look  like 
usurpation,  if  they  are  not  imposed  as  a  duty.  I  shall 
merely  remark  in  defence  of  Richelieu's  idea  (of  which 
there  are  others  to  tell  the  objections  and  difficulties), 
that  it  was  a  truly  French  idea  in  the  mind  of  the  great 
minister,  like  all  the  many  others  that  came  to  him  in 
the  course  of  his  glorious  patriotic  tyranny. 

For  in  France — note  this  well — we  are  not,  above  all, 
desirous  of  being  amused  or  pleased  by  a  work  of  art 
or  intellect,  nor  even  of  being  touched  by  it;  we  want 
to  know  if  we  are  right  in  applauding  and  in  being 
amused  and  touched.  We  fear  to  be  compromised, 
to  make  ourselves  ridiculous;  we  turn  about,  we 
question  our  neighbour;  we  like  to  meet  an  authority, 
to  find  some  one,  man  or  Association,  before  whom 
we  can  lay  our  doubts.  In  this  is  a  double  process  of 
the  French  mind.  It  has  impulse,  ardour,  a  dashing 
spirit,  but  criticism  is  close  beside  it,  rules  and  regula- 
tions are  felt  on  the  morrow  of  what  has  seemed 
rashness.  I  therefore  suppose  that  the  Academy, 
which  began  by  giving  its  judgment  rather  pertinently 
on  the  "Cid,"  might  have  kept  fairly  well  to  its 
opening  promise  if  it  had  found  itself  obliged  to  do  so. 
Let  us  suppose  a  judgment,  with  reasons  assigned, 
pronounced  by  the  Academy  within  six  months  on 


Ibistorg  ot  tbe  ifrencb  BcaDems.        15 

every  leading  work  in  literature;  which  judgment 
(due  allowance  being  made  for  difference  of  periods 
and  customs)  should  not  be  inferior  for  sound  sense, 
impartiality,  and  moderation  to  that  early  verdict  on 
the  "Cid."'  Such  judgments  would  to-day  form  a 
very  memorable  series,  and  a  critical  jurisprudence,  so 
to  call  it,  that  would  certainly  not  be  without  its 
action  on  the  vicissitudes  and  variations  of  the  public 
taste.  But  I  perceive  that  this  view  presupposes  and 
demands  a  series,  or  at  least  a  frequent  recurrence  of 
Richelieus  historically  impossible. 

In  all  this,  I  have  only  tried  to  make  it  felt  in  a 
rather  salient  way,  what  the  great  founder  intended 
on  this  point.  The  Academy,  I  repeat,  has  done  less 
and  has  done  more  than  he  expected  of  it;  and,  on  the 
whole,  if  he  could  reappear  on  one  of  our  fete-days, 
he  would  not  blush  too  much  for  his  creation;  he 
might  grumble  a  little,  but  he  would  also  quiver 
with  fatherly  pride  at  the  sight  of  his  emancipated 
offspring. 

Since  I  am  on  the  subject  of  the  Academy,  one  of 
the  most  national  subjects  in  France,  and  about  which 
everybody  talks,  I  ask  to  be  allowed  to  recall  a  few 
facts,  and  make  a  few  observations  without  much 
connection  as  they  occur  to  me. 

People  always  speak  of  the  academic  fauteuils 
(arm-chairs).  Originally,  and  when  the  Academy 
held  its  sessions  at  the  Louvre,  there  were  but  three, 
for  the  officers  of  the  company,  the  director,  chancellor, 


i6        Ibistorp  of  tbe  jfrencb  BcaDem^, 

and  perpetual  secretary.  It  was  on  the  election  of 
La  Monnoye  (December,  1713)  that  this  feature  was 
changed.  La  Monnoye  was  a  man  of  letters,  witty, 
educated,  commonplace  as  to  talent,  but  universally 
liked  and  esteemed  in  person;  a  laureate  grown  grey 
in  competitions,  one  of  those  happy  medio-critics 
that  make  a  desirable  candidate;  he  was  unanimously 
received;  Louis  XIV,  whom  he  had  celebrated  many 
a  time  in  verse,  showing  special  satisfaction.  La 
Monnoye,  writing  to  a  friend,  relates  his  reception  by 
the  Academy  as  follows  : 

"  There  is  no  example  of  an  Academician  received  with  greater  dis- 
tinction. 1  am  careful  not  to  attribute  this  to  my  own  merit,  which 
is  slight;  it  is  due  solely  to  the  influence  of  Cardinal  d'  Estrees  and  his 
nephew.  .  .  .  Something  quite  memorable  happened  at  the 
Academy  on  this  occasion.  None  but  the  three  officers  of  the  Com- 
pany had  faiiteuils  ;  the  cardinals  who  were  not  allowed  any  unless 
they  were  one  of  the  officers,  refused  in  consequence  to  be  present  at 
the  sessions.  The  embarrassment  of  Cardinal  d'Estrees  was  great,  he 
being  unable  to  give  me  his  vote  without  going  in  person  to  the 
Academy;  but  this  he  could  not  resolve  to  do  on  account  of  not  having 
a  fauteuil.  The  two  other  cardinals  who  were  members  of  the 
Academy,  Cardinal  de  Rohan  and  Cardinal  de  Polignac,  having  con- 
ferred with  him,  laid  the  matter  before  the  King,  who  ended  the  diffi- 
culty by  ordering  that  henceforth  all  the  Academicians  should  have 
fauteuils." 

Such  is  the  authentic  history  of  the  academical  arm- 
chairs. Now  those  forty  fauteuils  of  the  old  Acad- 
emy were  not  transmitted  to  the  new.  To  satisfy 
inquisitive  persons  and  those  who  want  to  know  by  the 
card  what  is  real  in  a  metaphor,  1  will  state  that  at  our 
sessions  there  are  no  fauteuils  only  comfortable  seats. 


Ibistors  ot  tbe  jfrencb  Hcabemi?.        17 

Sometimes  a  list  of  academicians  is  given  hyfauteuils  ; 
on  the  election  of  each  new  member  it  is  customary 
to  say  that  he  occupies  the  fauteiiil  of  such  and 
such  illustrious  men,  going  back  to  the  origin  of  the 
Academy.  All  that  is  chimerical.  The  old  Academy 
having  been  suppressed  in  1793,  its  affairs  became 
muddled  and  confused.  Later,  when  the  Institute 
was  created,  and  in  the  bosom  of  that  Institute  a  class 
that  corresponded  fairly  well  to  the  original  French 
Academy  was  formed,  there  was  no  direct  relation 
established  from  one  to  the  other;  those  of  the  old 
academicians  who  were  appointed  were  so  under 
new  rights,  and  not  as  a  recovery  of  possession. 
The  genealogy  of  the  fauteuils  coming  down  to  our 
day,  which  was  invented  some  thirty  [now  eighty] 
years  ago,  by  a  certain  professor  of  history,  who 
thought  it  had  a  good  effect  in  a  synoptical  table,  is 
as  false  as  most  genealogies.  Nevertheless,  the  pub- 
lic believes  in  it  and,  in  spite  of  what  I  say,  will 
probably  continue  to  believe  in  it. 

The  Dictionary  of  the  French  Academy,  not  that  in 
common  use,  which  is  already  in  the  hands  of  every 
one,  and  which  will  suffice  awhile  longer  until  newly 
revised,  but  an  historical  Dictionary,  begun  about 
fifteen  years  ago — an  important  addition  very  com- 
plete, very  rich  in  citations,  and  very  interesting  to 
read  (a  rare  thing  in  a  dictionary) — is  about  to  appear 
with  a  preface  by  the  learned  editor,  M.  Patin;  this 
first  addition,  important  as  it  is,  is  only  preliminary, 

VOL.  II. — 2. 


1 8        Ibtstor^  ot  tbe  jfrencb  aca&em^. 

and  will  be  presented  in  a  few  days  to  the  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction.  On  this  side  the  Academy 
shows  itself  faithful  in  extending  rather  than  limiting 
its  first  mission.' 

IVhat  is  a  classic  ? — a  delicate  question  to  which 
divers  answers  might  be  given  according  to  ages  and 
seasons.  A  man  of  intellect  put  it  to  me  to-day,  and 
1  will  try,  if  not  to  solve  it,  at  least  to  examine  and 
sift  it  before  my  readers,  to  induce  them  to  answer  it 
themselves,  and  throw  light,  if  I  can,  on  their  idea 
and  mine.  Why  not,  from  time  to  time,  risk  treating 
critically  subjects  that  are  not  personal,  which  con- 
cern, not  some  one,  but  some  thing;  subjects  of 
which  our  neighbours,  the  English,  have  succeeded 
so  well  in  making  a  whole  category  under  the  modest 
title  of  Essays.  It  is  true  that  to  treat  such  subjects, 
which  are  always  a  little  abstract  and  moral,  we  need 
to  speak  in  tranquillity,  to  be  sure  of  one's  own  atten- 
tion and  that  of  others,  to  seize,  in  short,  one  of 
those  half-hours  of  silence,  moderation,  and  leisure 
that  are  so  rarely  accorded  to  our  lively  France,  whose 

'  Since  the  above  was  written  (1859),  M.  Emile  Littre,  of  the  French 
Academy,  was  charged  with  the  duty  of  revising  and  enlarging  the 
original  Dictionary,  until  now  it  stands  as  a  great  monument  to  the 
French  language  in  many  volumes.  An  historical,  biographical,  geo- 
graphical, mythological  section  has  been  added  by  M.  Beaujean,  in- 
spector of  the  French  Academy,  and  the  collaborator  of  M.  Littre. 
An  abridged  edition  of  the  whole,  in  one  small  volume,  has  been 
published,  under  the  sanction  of  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  by 
Hachette  et  Cie.,  which  is  quite  invaluable  for  daily  and  constant 
use. — Tr. 


t)istorg  of  tbe  ^vcncb  ScaOem^.        19 

genius  is  impatient  of  them,  even  when  she  tries  to 
be  wise  and  to  make  no  more  revolutions. 

A  classic,  according  to  the  ordinary  definition,  is  an 
ancient  author,  already  consecrated  by  admiration,  and 
an  authority  in  his  own  class.  The  word  classic, 
used  in  this  sense,  first  appears  among  the  Romans. 
They  termed  classtci  not  all  citizens  of  diverse  classes, 
but  those  of  the  first  class  only,  who  had  a  revenue 
of,  at  least,  a  certain  specified  sum.  All  who  pos- 
sessed an  inferior  revenue  came  under  the  denomina- 
tion of  infra  classem,  beneath  the  class  par  excellence. 
Figuratively,  the  word  classicus  is  used  in  Aulus 
Gellius,  and  applied  to  writers:  a  writer  of  value  and 
note,  classicus  assiduusque  scriptor,  a  writer  of  ac- 
count, who  has  property,  and  is  not  to  be  confounded 
with  the  crowd  of  proletaries.  Such  an  expression 
supposes  an  age  advanced  enough  to  have  some- 
thing like  a  census  and  classification  of  literature. 

As  for  moderns:  in  the  beginning,  the  true  and 
only  classics  were,  naturally,  the  ancients.  The 
Greeks,  who,  by  singular  good  fortune  and  an  easy 
buoyancy  of  mind,  had  no  other  classics  than  them- 
selves, were,  at  first,  the  only  classics  of  the  Romans, 
who  took  pains  and  strove  to  imitate  them.  The 
Romans,  after  the  noble  ages  of  their  literature,  after 
Cicero  and  Virgil,  had  classics  of  their  own,  which 
became,  almost  exclusively,  those  of  the  succeeding 
centuries.  The  Middle  Ages,  which  were  not  as 
ignorant  of  Latin  antiquity  as  was  thought,  but  which 


20        ibtBtors  ot  tbc  ifcencb  Bca&cmi?. 

lacked  both  judgment  and  taste,  confounded  ranks 
and  orders:  Ovid  was  treated  on  a  better  footing  than 
Homer;  Boetius  was  thought  a  classic  equal,  at  the 
least,  to  Plato.  The  renascence  of  Letters,  in  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  cast  light  into  this 
long  confusion,  and  then  at  last  admirations  were 
graduated.  The  true  and  classic  authors  of  the  double 
antiquity  were  henceforth  detached  upon  a  luminous 
background,  and  grouped  themselves  harmoniously 
on  their  respective  heights. 

Meantime,  the  modern  literatures  were  born,  and  a 
few  of  the  most  precocious,  the  Italian  for  instance, 
had  already  an  antiquity  of  their  own.  Dante  had 
appeared;  and  posterity  had  early  saluted  him  as  a 
classic.  Italian  poesy  may  since  have  dwindled,  but 
when  it  chooses  it  can  recover  and  preserve  the  im- 
pulsion and  the  echo  of  that  high  origin.  It  is  no  in- 
different thing  for  a  poesy  to  have  such  a  point  of 
departure,  a  classic  source  in  such  high  regions,  and 
to  come  down  from  a  Dante  rather  than  issue  lamely 
from  a  Malherbe. 

Modern  Italy  had  its  classics  and  Spain  had  every 
right  to  feel  that  she  had  hers,  while  France  was  still 
without  them.  A  few  writers  of  talent  gifted  with 
originality  and  exceptional  warmth  of  fancy,  a  few 
brilliant  efforts,  isolated  and  without  sequence,  im- 
mediately broken  off  and  needing  ever  to  be  renewed, 
did  not  suffice  to  endow  our  nation  with  the  solid 
and  imposing  foundation  of  literary  wealth.     The  idea 


Ibistors  of  tbe  ifrencb  acat)em)?.        21 

of  a  classic  implies,  in  itself,  something  that  has  se- 
quence and  consistency,  which  makes  a  traditional 
whole,  which  creates  itself,  transmits  itself,  and  lasts. 
It  was  not  until  after  the  great  years  of  Louis  XIV 
that  the  French  nation  felt,  with  a  quiver  of  pride, 
that  such  happiness  had  come  to  her.  All  voices  told 
it  then  to  Louis  XIV  with  flattery,  with  exaggeration 
and  emphasis,  and  yet  with  a  certain  assured  feeling 
of  its  truth.  A  singular  and  piquant  contradiction 
then  appeared:  the  men  who  were  most  enchanted 
by  the  marvels  of  this  age  of  Louis  the  Great,  and 
who  even  sacrificed  the  ancients  to  the  moderns, 
these  men,  of  whom  Perrault  was  the  leader,  brought 
about  the  exaltation  and  consecration  of  the  very 
ones  who  were  their  most  ardent  adversaries  and 
opponents.  Boileau  avenged  and  angrily  maintained 
the  ancients  against  Perrault,  who  extolled  the  mod- 
erns, that  is  to  say:  Corneille,  Moliere,  Pascal,  and 
the  eminent  men  of  his  day,  including  among  the 
first  of  them  Boileau  himself.  The  kind  La  Fon- 
taine, taking  part  in  the  quarrel  on  behalf  of  the 
learned  Huet,  did  not  perceive  that  he  himself,  in 
spite  of  his  careless  habits,  was  about  to  wake  up 
and  find  himself  a  classic. 

The  best  definition  is  example:  as  soon  as  France 
possessed  its  Louis  the  Fourteenth  century,  and  could 
consider  it  from  a  little  distance,  she  knew  what  a 
classic  was,  better  than  any  statements  could  tell  her. 
The  eighteenth  century  added  to  this  idea  by  noble 


22        fbiston?  ot  tbe  ^frencb  Hcat)emi?« 

works  due  to  its  four  great  men.  Read  the  "  Age  of 
Louis  XIV"  by  Voltaire,  the  "  Grandeur  and  Decad- 
ence of  the  Romans  "  by  Montesquieu,  the  ' '  Epochs  of 
Nature"  by  Buffon,  the  "Savoyard  Vicar,"  and  certain 
fine  pages  of  revery  and  description  of  nature  by 
Jean-Jacques,  and  say  if  the  eighteenth  century  did 
not,  in  those  memorable  works,  combine  tradition 
with  freedom  of  development  and  independence. 
But  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century  (the  nine- 
teenth) and  under  the  Empire,  in  presence  of  the  first 
attempts  of  a  literature  decidedly  novel  and  rather 
adventurous,  the  idea  of  the  classic  shrank  and 
narrowed  strangely  in  certain  resisting  minds,  more 
grieved  than  severe.  The  first  Dictionary  of  the 
Academy  (1694)  defined  a  classic  author  simply  as 
"an  ancient  author  much  approved,  who  has  authority 
in  the  matter  of  which  he  treats."  The  Dictionary 
of  the  Academy  of  183s  takes  that  same  definition  and 
makes  it,  from  being  rather  vague  as  it  was,  precise 
and  even  narrow.  It  defines  classic  authors  as  those 
"who  have  become  models  in  any  language";  and 
in  the  articles  that  follow,  the  expressions,  "  model  " 
—  "  rules  established  for  the  composition  of  style  "  — 
"strict  rules  of  the  art  to  which  writers  must  con- 
form," recur  continually.  This  definition  of  the 
classic  was  evidently  made  by  the  respectable  Aca- 
demicians, our  predecessors,  in  presence  and  in  view 
of  what  was  then  called  the  romantic,  that  is  to  say, 
in  view  of  the  enemy.     It  is  time,   I   think,  to   re- 


Ibistocp  of  tbe  ^reucb  Hca^em^.        23 

nounce  such  restrictive  and  timid  definitions,  and  to 
enlarge  our  minds. 

A  true  classic,  as  I  should  like  to  hear  it  defined,  is 
an  author  who  has  enriched  the  human  mind,  who 
has  really  augmented  its  treasury,  who  has  caused  it 
to  take  a  step  in  advance,  who  has  discovered  some 
moral  truth  that  is  not  equivocal,  or  some  eternal 
passion  in  the  heart  where  all  seemed  known  and 
explored;  who  has  rendered  his  thought,  observation, 
or  invention  under  any  form,  no  matter  what  if  it 
be  broad  and  grand,  refined  and  rational,  healthful 
and  beautiful  in  itself;  who  speaks  to  all  in  a  style 
of  his  own,  which  is  felt  to  be  that  for  all  the  world, 
a  new  style  without  neologisms,  new  yet  ancient, 
easily  contemporaneous  with  all  epochs. 

Such  a  classic  may  be  for  a  moment  revolution- 
ary; or  rather,  he  may  seem  so  at  first,  though 
he  is  not  so;  he  has  never  violently  attacked  that 
which  was  around  him,  he  has  overthrown  that  which 
hindered  him  only  to  re-establish,  as  soon  as  possible, 
the  equilibrium  to  the  profit  of  the  orderly  and  the 
beautiful. 

My  readers  can  put,  if  they  like,  many  names  under 
this  definition,  which  1  have  tried  to  make  grandiose 
and  plastic,  or,  to  express  it  better,  open  and  gene- 
rous. I  should  put  there,  in  the  first  instance,  Cor- 
neille,  the  Corneille  of  Polyeucte,  Cinna,  and  Horace. 
I  should  put  Moliere,  the  most  complete,  the  fullest 
poetical  genius  we  have  had  in  France. 


24        fbistors  of  tbe  3frencb  Bca&emi?. 

"  Moliere  is  so  great,"  said  Goethe,  that  king  of  critics,  "that  he 
astounds  us  each  time  that  we  read  him.  He  is  a  man  apart;  his 
comedies  touch  the  tragic,  and  no  one  has  the  courage  to  try  to  imi- 
tate them.  ...  In  a  play  for  the  stage  each  action  must  be  im- 
portant in  itself,  and  lead  up  to  an  action  more  important  still. 
Tartuffe  is,  in  this  respect,  a  model  ...  it  is  all  that  there  is  of  finest. 
Every  year  I  read  a  play  of  Moliere,  just  as,  from  time  to  time,  1  con- 
template some  engraving  from  the  great  Italian  masters." 


I  do  not  conceal  from  myself  that  the  definition  I 
have  just  given  of  the  classic  is  rather  outside  of  the 
idea  that  usually  accompanies  that  title.  Conditions 
as  to  regularity,  wisdom,  moderation,  reason,  domi- 
nating and  controlling  all  else,  prevail  in  that  idea. 
In  this  sense  the  classics  par  excellence  must  be  writ- 
ers of  the  second  order;  correct,  intelligent,  elegant, 
always  clear  and  precise;  of  noble  passion  still,  but 
its  force  slightly  veiled.  The  characteristic  of  this 
theory,  which  subordinates  imagination  and  sensibil- 
ity to  reason  (of  which  Scaliger  gave  perhaps  the 
first  signal  among  moderns),  was,  properly  speaking, 
that  of  the  Latin  theory,  and  it  long  remained  the 
preference  of  the  French  theory.  It  has  truth,  if  used 
only  in  the  right  way,  and  provided  that  word  reason  is 
not  abused.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  it  is  abused, 
and  that  if  reason  is  to  be  confounded  with  poetic 
genius,  and  to  make  one  with  it  in  a  moral  homily,  it 
cannot  be  the  same  thing  as  that  genius  so  varied,  so 
diversely  creative  in  its  expression  of  passions  in  the 
drama  or  the  epic.  Where  will  you  find  reason  in  the 
fourth  book  of  the  yEneid  and  in  the  transports  of 


Ibfstor^  ot  tbe  ifrencb  Bca&ems.        25 

Dido  ?  Where  will  you  find  it  in  the  madness  of 
Phedre  ?  The  spirit  that  dictated  that  theory  leads  to 
putting  in  the  first  rank  writers  who  control  their 
imagination,  rather  than  those  who  yield  themselves 
up  to  it;  who  put  Virgil  before  Homer,  Racine  before 
Corneille.  The  masterpiece  that  this  theory  loves  to 
quote,  which  unites,  in  truth,  all  its  conditions  of  pru- 
dence, force,  gradual  audacity,  moral  elevation  and 
grandeur,  is  Athalie.  Turenne  in  his  last  two  cam- 
paigns and  Racine  in  Athalie — those  are  the  great  ex- 
amples of  what  the  prudent  and  the  wise  can  do 
when  they  take  possession  of  the  full  maturity  of  their 
genius. 

Racine's  Athalie  and  Bossuet's  "Discourse  on  Uni- 
versal History,"  are  the  highest  masterpieces  that 
the  rigorously  classic  theory  can  offer  in  France  to  its 
friends  as  to  its  enemies.  But  in  spite  of  what  is 
admirably  simple  and  majestic  in  the  accomplishment 
of  such  unique  productions,  we  ought,  in  practising 
the  art,  to  broaden  that  theory  a  little,  and  show  that 
there  are  ways  of  widening  it  without  going  so  far  as 
relaxing  it.  Goethe,  whom  I  like  to  quote  on  such  a 
matter,  says: 

"  I  call  the  classic  healthy  and  the  romantic  sicklf.  To  me  the 
poem  of  the  '  Niebelungen '  is  as  classic  as  Homer;  both  are  health- 
ful and  vigorous.  The  works  of  the  present  day  are  not  romantic 
because  they  are  new,  but  because  they  are  feeble,  sickly,  or  diseased. 
The  works  of  the  ancients  are  not  classic  because  they  are  old,  but 
because  they  are  energetic,  fresh,  buoyant.  If  we  consider  the  ro- 
mantic and  the  classic  from  these  two  points  of  view  we  shall  soon 
agree." 


26        Ibistorif?  ot  tbe  Jfrencb  BcaC)em^. 

In  France  we  have  had  no  great  classic  anterior  to 
the  age  of  Louis  XIV;  the  Dantes  and  the  Shake- 
speares,  those  primal  authorities,  to  whom  sooner  or 
later  we  return  in  days  of  emancipation,  are  lacking 
to  us.  We  have  had  mere  skeletons  of  great  poets, 
like  Mathurin  Regnier,  like  Rabelais,  without  ideal  of 
any  kind,  without  passion  or  serious  aim  to  conse- 
crate them.  Montaigne  was  a  species  of  premature 
classic,  of  the  genus  of  Horace,  but  he  gave  himself 
like  a  prodigal,  for  want  of  worthy  surroundings,  to 
the  libertine  fancies  of  his  pen  and  his  temperament. 
It  results  that  we,  less  than  all  other  nations,  have 
among  our  ancestral  authors  that  which  enables  us 
boldly  to  lay  claim  to  literary  liberties  and  franchises. 
Still,  with  Moliere  and  La  Fontaine  among  our  classics 
of  the  great  century,  we  have  enough  that  nothing 
legitimate  can  be  refused  to  those  who  will  dare  and 
know  all. 

The  important  thing  to-day  seems  to  me  to  main- 
tain the  idea  and  the  worship  of  the  classic,  while 
enlarging  both.  There  is  no  receipt  for  making  clas- 
sics; that  point  at  least  ought  to  be  evident.  To 
believe  that  by  imitating  certain  qualities  of  purity, 
sobriety,  correctives,  and  elegance,  independently  of 
nature  and  its  plane,  we  can  become  classic,  is  to 
believe  that  after  Racine  himself  there  is  room  for 
Racine's  sons.  More  than  that;  it  is  not  good  to 
appear  too  soon  and  to  contemporaries  as  a  classic; 
such  men  stand  great  chance  of  not  remaining  so  to 


Ibistor^  of  tbe  ifrencb  BcaDem^.        27 

posterity.  Fontanes,  in  iiis  day,  seemed  a  classic  to 
his  friends;  and  see  the  pale  colour  that  he  has  at 
a  distance  of  twenty-five  years!  How  short  a  time 
these  precocious  classics,  made  so  by  the  moment,  last! 
We  turn  about  some  morning  and  we  are  amazed  not 
to  find  them  erect  behind  us  —  they  were  only  for  a 
"breakfast  in  the  sun,"  as  Mme.  de  Sevigne  would 
gaily  say.  In  the  matter  of  classics  the  most  unex- 
pected are  always  the  best  and  the  greatest;  ask 
those  virile  geniuses  born  immortal  and  perennially  in 
vogue.  The  least  classic,  apparently,  of  the  four 
great  poets  of  Louis  XlV's  era  was  Moliere;  he  was 
applauded  then  far  more  than  he  was  rightly  esti- 
mated; people  enjoyed  him  without  knowing  his 
value.  Next  to  him,  the  least  classic  seemed  to  be  La 
Fontaine;  and  see,  after  two  centuries  and  a  half, 
what  has  happened  for  both  of  them !  Much  before 
Boileau,  before  even  Racine,  are  they  not  unanimously 
recognised  to-day  as  the  richest,  the  most  fruitful,  in 
their  gift  of  universal  moral  truth  ?  Let  us  content 
ourselves  with  feeling  them,  penetrating  them,  ad- 
miring them;  as  for  us,  coming  at  this  late  day,  let 
us  at  least  try  to  be  ourselves;  let  us  have  the  sin- 
cerity and  the  natural  instinct  of  our  own  thoughts, 
our  own  feelings.  This  can  always  be  attained;  add 
to  it  (which  is  more  difficult)  elevation,  direction,  if 
possible,  toward  some  high-placed  aim;  and  while 
we  speak  our  language,  and  are  subject  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  age  in  which  we  live  and  from  which  we 


28        Ibistor^  ot  tbe  jfrencb  aca&em^. 

derive  our  strength  as  well  as  our  defects,  let  us  ask 
ourselves,  from  time  to  time,  looking  upward  to  the 
summits,  and  fastening  our  eyes  upon  those  venerated 
groups:   "What  would  they  say  of  us  ?  " 

But  why  speak  always  as  an  author,  and  of  writ- 
ing ?  There  comes  an  age,  perchance,  when  we 
write  no  more.  Happy  they  who  read,  who  re-read; 
they  who  can  follow  their  free  inclinations  among 
their  books!  There  comes  a  season  in  life  when, 
all  work  done,  all  experiences  over,  the  keen  joys 
remain  of  studying,  of  going  to  the  depths  of  the 
things  we  know,  the  things  we  feel,  just  as  we  see, 
and  see  again  with  relish  the  friends  we  love:  pure 
delights  of  the  heart  and  of  the  taste  in  their  maturity! 
Then  it  is  that  the  word  classic  takes  its  true  mean- 
ing, and  defines  itself  for  every  man  of  taste  by  his 
own  irresistible  predilection  and  choice.  The  taste 
is  formed  by  that  time,  formed  and  definite;  good 
sense,  if  it  ever  comes,  has  come,  and  is  consummate. 
There  is  no  time  now  to  make  trials,  no  desire  to 
start  out  upon  discoveries.  We  hold  fast  to  our 
friends,  to  those  whom  we  have  tested  by  long  inter- 
course—  old  wine,  old  books,  old  friends! 


II. 
Pierre  Corneille. 


29 


n. 

Pierre  Corneille. 

AS  a  matter  of  criticism  and  literary  history,  there 
is  no  reading,  it  seems  to  me,  more  enter- 
taining, more  delectable,  and  at  the  same 
time  more  fruitful  of  instruction  of  all  kinds  than 
good  biographies  of  great  men:  not  shallow  and  dry 
biographies,  scanty  yet  pretentious  notices,  in  which 
the  writer  thinks  only  of  shining,  and  of  which  each 
paragraph  is  sharpened  with  an  epigram;  I  mean 
broad,  copious,  and  sometimes  even  diffuse  histories 
of  the  man,  and  of  his  works:  biographies  that  enter 
into  an  author,  produce  him  under  all  his  diverse 
aspects,  make  him  live,  speak,  move,  as  he  must 
have  done  in  life;  follow  him  into  his  home,  into  his 
domestic  manners  and  customs,  as  far  as  possible; 
connect  him  on  all  sides  with  this  earth,  with  real 
existence,  with  those  every-day  habits  on  which 
great  men  depend  no  less  than  the  rest  of  us;  in  short, 
the  actual  foundation  on  which  they  stand,  from  which 
they  rise  to  greater  heights  at  times,  and  to  which 
they  fall  back  constantly. 


32  Pierre  Corneille. 

The  Germans  and  the  English,  with  their  complex 
nature  of  analysis  and  poesy,  understand  and  take 
great  pleasure  in  these  excellent  biographies.  Walter 
Scott  declares  that,  for  his  part,  he  knows  no  more 
interesting  work  in  English  literature  than  Boswell's 
"  Life  of  Johnson."  In  France  we  are  beginning  to  es- 
teem and  to  require  studies  of  this  sort.  In  our  time, 
the  great  men  of  Letters,  if  they  were  even  less  eager 
than  they  are  to  come  forward  with  personal  revela- 
tions in  their  memoirs  and  poetical  confessions,  may 
be  very  certain  that  they  will  not  lack  after  death 
for  demonstrators,  analysts,  and  biographers.  It  was 
not  always  thus;  so  that  when  we  come  to  inquire 
into  the  life,  especially  the  childhood  and  the  first  be- 
ginnings of  our  great  writers  and  poets  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  it  is  with  difficulty  that  we  discover  a 
few  traditions,  little  authentic,  a  few  doubtful  anec- 
dotes dispersed  among  the  Ana.  The  literature  and 
the  poesy  of  those  times  were  not  personal;  authors 
did  not  entertain  the  public  with  their  own  senti- 
ments or  their  own  affairs;  biographers  imagined, 
I  know  not  why,  that  the  history  of  a  writer  was 
wholly  in  his  writings,  and  their  superficial  criticism 
never  went  to  the  man  below  the  poet.  Moreover, 
as  in  those  days  reputations  were  very  slow  in  mak- 
ing, it  was  not  until  much  later,  in  the  old  age  of 
the  great  man,  that  some  ardent  admirer  of  his 
genius — a  Brossette,  a  Monchesnay — bethought  him 
of  making  his  biography.     Or  perhaps  this  biographer 


CORNEILLE. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  painting  by  Lebrun. 


IPierre  Corneillc.  33 

was  a  pious  and  devoted  relative,  too  young  to  have 
known  the  youth  of  his  author — like  Fontenelle  with 
Corneille,  and  Louis  Racine  with  his  father.  Hence, 
in  the  nephew's  history  of  Corneille,  and  the  son's 
history  of  Racine,  much  ignorance,  many  inaccuracies 
catch  the  eye  at  once;  and,  in  particular,  we  find  a 
rapid  hurrying  over  of  the  first  literary  years,  which 
are,  nevertheless,  the  most  decisive. 

When  we  begin  by  knowing  a  great  man  in  the  full 
force  of  his  genius  only,  we  imagine  that  he  has  never 
been  without  it;  and  this  seems  to  us  so  natural  that 
often  we  never  trouble  ourselves  to  explain  to  our  own 
minds  how  it  came  about;  just  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
when  we  know  such  a  man  from  the  first,  and  before 
his  fame,  we  usually  do  not  suspect  what  he  will 
some  day  become;  we  live  beside  him  without  think- 
ing to  watch  him;  we  neglect  to  take  account  in  him 
of  that  which  it  was  most  important  we  should  know. 
Great  men  themselves  often  contribute  to  strengthen 
this  twofold  illusion  by  their  manner  of  acting ; 
young,  unknown,  and  obscure,  they  efface  them- 
selves, keep  silence,  elude  attention,  and  affect  no 
position  because  they  want  but  one,  and  the  time  is 
not  ripe  to  lay  their  hand  upon  it;  later,  bowed  down 
to  by  all,  and  famous,  they  cast  into  the  shade  their 
beginnings,  usually  rough  and  bitter;  they  do  not 
willingly  relate  their  own  formation,  any  more  than 
the  Nile  reveals  its  sources. 

And  yet,  the  essential  point  in  the  life  of  a  great 


34  Pierre  Corneille. 

writer,  a  great  poet,  is  just  this:  to  seize,  grasp, 
analyse  the  whole  man  at  the  moment  when,  by  a 
concurrence  more  or  less  slow  or  easy,  his  genius,  his 
education,  his  circumstances  accord  in  such  a  way 
that  he  has  given  birth  to  his  first  masterpiece.  If 
you  comprehend  the  poet  at  this  critical  moment,  if 
you  unravel  the  knot  to  which  all  within  him  will 
henceforth  be  bound,  if  you  find,  so  to  speak,  the  key 
to  that  mysterious  ring,  half  iron,  half  diamond,  which 
links  his  second  existence,  radiant,  dazzling,  and 
solemn,  to  his  first  existence,  obscure,  repressed,  and 
solitary,  the  very  memory  of  which  he  would  often- 
times fain  destroy,  then  it  may  be  said  of  you  that 
you  possess  and  know  your  poet  to  the  depths;  you 
have  entered  with  him  the  darksome  regions,  as 
Dante  with  Virgil;  you  are  worthy  to  accompany 
him,  side  by  side  and  without  fatigue,  through  his 
other  marvels.  From  Andromaque  to  Athalie,  from  the 
"  Cid  "  to  Nicomede,  the  initiation  is  easy:  the  thread 
of  the  labyrinth  is  in  your  hand;  you  have  only  to 
unwind  it. 

It  is  a  glorious  moment  for  the  critic  and  for  the  poet 
when  each,  in  his  own  special  meaning,  can  exclaim 
with  the  old  philosopher:  "  I  have  found!  "  The  poet 
has  found  the  region  where  he  can  henceforth  live  and 
develop;  the  critic  has  found  the  inspiration  and  the 
law  of  that  genius.  If  the  sculptor,  who,  in  his  way, 
is  a  noble  biographer,  fixing  for  the  eye  in  marble 
the  idea  of  the  poet, — if  he  could  always  choose  the 


Pierre  CorneiUe*  35 

moment  when  the  poet  is  most  like  unto  himself, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  he  would  seize  it  at  the  day 
and  hour  when  the  first  ray  of  fame  and  glory  came  to 
illumine  that  powerful  and  sombre  forehead.  At  that 
unique  moment  in  life,  genius,  for  some  time  past 
adult  and  virile,  existing  uneasily,  sadly,  within  its 
own  consciousness,  restraining  itself  with  difficulty,  is 
suddenly  called  forth  by  the  voice  of  acclamation, 
and  expands  to  the  aurora  of  triumph.  With  time, 
that  man  of  genius  may  become  more  calm,  more 
reposeful,  more  mature;  but  also  he  will  lose  in 
naivete  of  expression;  he  will  make  himself  a  veil 
which  must  be  lifted  before  we  can  reach  him;  the 
freshness  of  personal  sentiment  will  be  dimmed  on  his 
forehead;  the  soul  will  be  careful  not  to  reveal  itself; 
a  studied  countenance,  or  at  least  a  more  mechanical 
one,  will  have  taken  the  place  of  that  first  free,  eager 
attitude. 

Now  what  the  sculptor  would  do  if  he  could,  the 
critic-biographer,  who  has  under  his  hand  the  whole 
life  and  all  the  moments  of  his  author,  ought,  with 
still  greater  reason,  to  do;  he  ought  to  turn  into  living 
reality,  by  his  sagacious  and  penetrating  analysis,  that 
which  the  artist  instinctively  figures  under  the  form 
of  symbol.  The  statue  once  erected,  the  type  once 
found  and  expressed,  nothing  remains  to  do  but  to 
reproduce  it,  with  slight  modifications,  during  the 
successive  developments  of  the  life  of  the  poet,  as  if 
in  a  series  of  bas-reliefs. 


36  perre  Corneille. 

I  know  not  if  this  theory  of  mine,  half  poetic,  half 
critical,  is  here  made  clear;  but  I  believe  it  to  be  very 
true;  and  so  long  as  the  biographers  of  great  poets  do 
not  keep  it  before  their  mind,  they  will  make  useful 
and  correct  books,  estimable  no  doubt,  but  not  works 
of  the  higher  criticism  and  of  art;  they  will  collect 
anecdotes,  determine  dates,  lay  bare  literary  quarrels; 
but  readers  will  be  left  to  extract  the  essence,  to 
breathe  vitality  into  the  men;  they  will  be  chroniclers, 
not  sculptors;  they  will  keep  the  records  of  the 
temple,  but  they  will  not  be  the  priests  of  the  god. 

The  general  state  of  literature  when  a  new  author 
appears,  the  special  education  that  author  has  received, 
and  the  individual  genius  which  nature  has  bestowed 
upon  him,  those  are  three  influences  which  it  is  im- 
portant to  distinguish  in  his  first  masterpiece,  giving 
to  each  its  part  and  determining  clearly  what  belongs 
of  right  to  pure  genius.  Now,  when  Corneille,  born  in 
1606,  reached  the  age  when  poesy  and  drama  began 
to  occupy  his  mind,  when  he  saw  things  at  first  in 
the  bulk,  and  at  a  distance  in  the  depths  of  his  pro- 
vince, the  names  of  three  great  poets  (to-day  very  un- 
equally famous)  appeared  to  him  above  all  others: 
Ronsard,  Malherbe,  and  Theophile:  Ronsard,  long 
dead,  but  still  in  possession  of  a  vast  renown,  and 
representing  the  poesy  of  an  expired  century;  Mal- 
herbe, living  but  already  old,  opening  the  poesy  of  the 
new  century,  and  placed  beside  Ronsard  by  those 
who  do  not  look  closely  into  the  details  of  literary 


Ipierrc  Corneille.  37 

disputes;  Theophile,  young,  adventurous,  ardent; 
seeming,  in  the  splendour  of  his  advent,  about  to 
equal  his  predecessors.  As  for  the  stage,  that  was 
already  occupied  for  a  score  of  years  by  a  single  man, 
Alexandre  Hardy,  who  never  even  signed  his  plays 
on  the  posters,  so  notoriously  was  he  the  dramatic 
poet  par  excellence.  His  dictatorship,  it  is  true,  was 
about  to  cease;  Theophile,  by  his  tragedy  oi  Pyrame 
et  Thisbe  had  struck  the  first  blow,  and  Mairet,  Rotrou, 
and  Scudery  were  just  appearing  on  the  scene.  But 
all  these  lesser  reputations,  scarcely  born  as  yet, 
which  made  the  pedantic  topic  of  the  fashionable 
alcoves,  of  that  crowd  of  beaux  esprits  of  the  second 
and  third  class,  who  swarmed  around  Malherbe  below 
Maynard  and  Racau,  were  lost  upon  the  young  Cor- 
neille, who  lived  in  Rouen,  and  there  heard  only  the 
echoes  of  the  loudest  public  fame.  Ronsard,  Mal- 
herbe, Theophile,  and  Hardy  composed,  therefore,  the 
whole,  or  nearly  so,  of  his  modern  literature. 

Brought  up  at  a  Jesuit  college,  he  had  there  obtained 
a  sufficient  knowledge  of  antiquity;  but  the  study  of 
the  law,  to  which  his  father  destined  him,  and  which 
he  pursued  until  his  twenty-first  year  (1627),  must 
have  retarded  the  development  of  his  poetic  tastes. 
Nevertheless,  he  fell  in  love;  and  without  admitting 
here  an  improbable  anecdote  related  by  Fontenelle, 
and  especially  rejecting  that  writer's  ridiculous  con- 
clusion that  to  this  love  we  owe  the  great  Corneille,  it 
is  certain,  by  Corneille's  own  avowal,  that  this  first 


38  Pierre  Corneille. 

passion  awoke  him,  and  taught  him  to  make  verses. 
It  seems  not  unlikely  that  some  special  circumstance 
of  this  affair  incited  him  to  compose  Me'lite,  though 
we  can  scarcely  see  what  part  he  could  have  played  in 
it.  The  object  of  his  passion  was,  we  are  told,  a 
young  lady  of  Rouen,  who  became  Mme.  Du  Pont 
by  marrying  an  official  of  that  city.  Extremely  beau- 
tiful and  clever,  known  to  Corneille  from  childhood,  it 
does  not  appear  that  she  ever  responded  to  his  re- 
spectful love  otherwise  than  by  an  indulgent  friend- 
ship. She  received  his  verses,  and  sometimes  asked 
him  for  them ;  but  the  growing  genius  of  the  poet  v/as 
ill-contained  in  the  madrigals,  sonnets,  and  gallant 
songs  with  which  his  career  thus  began.  He  found 
himself  "imprisoned";  he  felt  that  "to  produce  he 
needed  a  free  wing — le  clef  des  champs.  A  hundred 
verses  cost  me  less,"  he  said,  "than  two  lines  of 
song."  The  stage  tempted  him;  the  counsels  of  his 
lady  contributed,  no  doubt,  to  encourage  him  in  this. 
He  wrote  Melite,  and  sent  it  to  the  old  dramatist, 
Hardy.  The  latter  thought  it  "a  rather  pretty  farce," 
and  the  young  lawyer,  just  twenty-three  years  old, 
started  from  Rouen  to  be  present  at  the  success  of  his 
play  in  Paris  (1629). 

The  principal  part  of  these  first  years  of  Corneille's 
life  is  undeniably  his  passion,  and  the  original  nature 
of  the  man  is  revealed  in  it.  Simple,  pure-minded, 
shy,  and  timid  of  speech,  rather  awkward,  but  very 
sincere  and  respectful  in  love,  he  adored  a  woman 


Ipierre  Corneille.  39 

whom  he  failed  to  win,  and  who,  after  giving  him 
some  hope,  married  another  man.  He  tells  us,  him- 
self, of  a  "  misfortune  which  broke  the  current  of  their 
affections";  but  this  ill-success  never  embittered  him 
against  his  "beautiful  inhuman  one,"  as  he  calls  her: 

"  My  love  for  her  must  still  remain  the  same; 
I  feel  myself  still  shaken  by  her  name. 

All  love  in  me  by  her  was  so  consumed, 
That  nought  seems  lovable  now  that  is  doomed; 
So  love  1  nought — no  later  conquering  art 
Has  since  possessed  my  genius  or  my  heart." 

It  was  fifteen  years  before  this  sad  and  tender 
memory,  guardian  of  his  youth,  weakened  sufficiently 
to  allow  him  to  marry  another  woman;  and  then  he 
began  the  life  of  a  burgher  household,  from  which  no 
dissipation  distracted  him,  even  amid  the  licence  of 
the  stage  world  in  which  he  was  forced  to  mix.  I 
know  not  if  I  mistake,  but  I  think  that  I  already  see  in 
that  sensitive,  resigned,  and  sober  nature,  a  touching 
naivete  that  reminds  me  of  the  worthy  Ducis  and  his 
loves,  a  virtuous  awkwardness,  full  of  integrity  and 
openness  of  heart,  such  as  I  admire  in  the  Vicar  of 
Wakefield:  and  I  take  the  more  pleasure  in  seeing, 
or,  if  you  choose,  in  dreaming  all  this,  because  I  per- 
ceive the  genius  below  it,  the  genius  of  our  great 
Corneille. 

From  1629,  the  period  when  Corneille  first  came  to 
Paris,  to  1636,  when  "The  Cid  "  was  first  acted,  he 
completed  his  literary  education,  which  was  merely 


40  ipierre  Corneille. 

sketched-out  in  the  provinces.  He  put  himself  into 
connection  with  the  wits  and  poets  of  his  time,  espe- 
cially with  those  of  his  own  age,  Mairet,  Scudery, 
Rotrou:  he  learned  then  what  he  had  not  known 
hitherto,  that  Ronsard  was  a  little  out  of  fashion,  that 
Malherbe,  dead  within  a  year,  had  dethroned  him  in 
public  opinion;  that  Theophile,  also  dead,  had  disap- 
pointed all  hopes  and  left  but  a  questionable  memory 
behind  him;  that  the  stage  was  growing  nobler  and 
purer  under  the  care  of  Cardinal  de  Richelieu;  that 
Hardy  was  no  longer  by  any  means  its  sole  supporter, 
for  a  troop  of  young  rivals  were  judging  him,  to  his 
great  displeasure,  rather  freely,  and  disputing  his  her- 
itage. Above  all,  Corneille  learned  that  there  were 
rules  of  which  he  had  never  dreamed  in  Rouen,  but 
about  which  the  brains  of  Paris  were  keenly  excited: 
such  as  keeping  five  acts  in  one  place  or  getting  out 
of  it;  to  be,  or  not  to  be  within  the  space  of  twenty- 
four  hours,  etc.  The  learned  men  and  the  rule-lovers 
made  war  on  these  points  against  the  lawless  and 
the  ignorant.  Mairet  held  with  the  former;  Claveret 
declared  against  them;  Rotrou  cared  little;  Scudery 
discussed  emphatically. 

In  the  various  plays  that  Corneille  composed  during 
this  space  of  five  years,  he  applied  himself  to  under- 
stand thoroughly  the  habits  of  the  stage  and  the  taste 
of  the  public;  I  shall  not  try  to  follow  him  in  this  ten- 
tative course.  He  was  quickly  accepted  by  the  city 
and  the  Court;  the  cardinal  took  notice  of  him,  and 


BMerre  Corneille.  41 

attached  him  to  his  service  as  one  of  five  authors;  his 
comrades  cherished  and  extolled  him.  With  Rotrou, 
in  particular,  he  contracted  one  of  those  friendships, 
so  rare  in  literature,  which  no  spirit  of  rivalry  could 
ever  chill.  Younger  than  Corneille,  Rotrou  had, 
nevertheless,  preceded  him  on  the  stage  and,  in  the 
beginning,  had  helped  him  with  advice.  Corneille 
was  grateful  to  the  point  of  calling  his  young  friend 
"father";  and  certainly,  if  we  must  indicate  at  this 
period  of  his  life  the  most  characteristic  trait  of  his 
genius  and  his  soul,  we  should  point  to  this  tenderly 
filial  friendship  for  the  worthy  Rotrou,  just  as,  in  the 
preceding  period,  it  was  his  pure  and  respectful  love 
for  the  woman  I  have  mentioned.  In  it  there  was,  as 
I  think,  truer  forecast  of  sublime  greatness  than  in 
Meliie,  Clitandre,  La  Veuve,  La  Galerie  du  Palais, 
La  Place  Roy  ale,  L'  Illusion;  and  fully  as  much  as  in 
Medee. 

During  this  time,  Corneille  made  frequent  excur- 
sions to  Rouen.  In  one  of  these  journeys  he  visited 
the  house  of  a  M.  de  Chalons,  former  secretary  of  the 
queen-mother,  now  retired  from  old  age: 

"  Monsieur,"  the  old  man  said  to  him,  "  the  style  of  comedy  which 
you  have  taken  up  can  give  you  only  ephemeral  fame.  You  can  find 
among  the  Spaniards  subjects  which,  if  treated  according  to  our  taste 
by  hands  like  yours,  would  produce  great  effects.  Learn  their  lan- 
guage, it  is  easy;  1  offer  to  teach  you  all  I  know  of  it,  and,  until  you 
are  able  to  read  for  yourself,  1  will  translate  to  you  parts  of  Guillen  de 
Castro." 

This  meeting  was  great  good  luck  for  Corneille; 


42  ipierre  Corneille. 

no  sooner  had  he  set  foot  into  the  noble  poesy  of 
Spain  than  he  felt  at  ease,  as  if  in  a  country  of  his 
own.  Loyal  spirit,  full  of  honour  and  morality,  walk- 
ing with  uplifted  head,  he  could  not  fail  to  fee!  a  sud- 
den and  deep  affection  for  the  chivalrous  heroes  of 
that  brave  nation.  His  impetuous  warmth  of  heart, 
his  childlike  sincerity,  his  inviolable  devotion  in  friend- 
ship, his  melancholy  resignation  in  love,  his  religion  of 
duty,  his  nature  wholly  unveiled,  naively  grave  and 
sententious,  noble  with  pride  and  prud'homie  —  all 
inclined  him  strongly  to  the  Spanish  style.  He  em- 
braced it  with  fervour,  adapted  it,  without  much  con- 
sidering how,  to  the  taste  of  his  nation  and  his  age, 
and  created  for  himself  a  unique  originality  in  the 
midst  of  the  commonplace  imitations  that  were  being 
made  around  him.  No  more  tentatives,  no  slow  pro- 
gressive advance,  as  in  his  preceding  comedies.  Blind 
and  rapid  in  his  instinct,  he  went  at  one  stroke  to  the 
sublime,  the  glorious,  the  pathetic,  as  if  to  things  famil- 
iar; producing  them  in  splendid,  simple  language  that 
all  the  world  can  understand,  and  which  belongs  to 
him  alone.  From  the  night  of  the  first  representation 
of  "The  Cid  "  our  theatre  was  truly  founded;  France 
possessed  the  great  Corneille;  and  the  triumphant 
poet,  who,  like  his  own  heroes,  spoke  openly  of  him- 
self as  he  thought,  had  the  right  to  exclaim,  without 
fear  of  denial: 

"I  know  what  I  am;  I  believe  what  is  said  of  me." 
The  dazzling  success  of  "  The  Cid  "  and  the  very  le- 


Pierre  Corneille.  43 

gitimate  pride  felt  and  shown  by  Corneille  raised  all  his 
past  rivals  and  all  the  authors  of  tragedy,  from  Clav- 
eret  to  Richelieu,  against  him.  I  shall  not  dwell  here 
on  the  details  of  this  quarrel,  which  is  one  of  the  best- 
illuminated  spots  in  our  literary  history.  The  effect 
produced  on  the  poet  by  this  outbreak  of  criticism 
was  such  as  might  be  expected  from  the  character  of 
his  talent  and  his  mind.  Corneille,  as  I  have  said, 
was  a  pure,  instinctive,  blind  genius,  of  free,  spontane- 
ous impulse,  and  well-nigh  devoid  of  those  medium 
qualities  which  accompany,  and  second  efficaciously, 
the  gift  divine  in  a  poet.  He  was  neither  adroit  nor 
skilful  in  details,  his  taste  was  little  delicate,  his  judg- 
ment not  sure,  his  tact  obtuse,  and  he  gave  himself 
small  account  of  his  methods  as  an  artist;  he  piqued 
himself,  however,  on  his  shrewdness  and  reserve. 
Between  his  genius  and  his  good  sense  there  was 
nothing,  or  nearly  nothing;  and  that  good  sense, 
which  did  not  lack  subtlety  or  logic,  had  to  make 
strong  efforts,  especially  if  provoked,  to  goad  itself  up 
to  the  level  of  the  genius,  to  grasp  it  in  hand,  com- 
prehend it,  and  train  it.  If  Corneille  had  come  earlier, 
before  the  Academy  and  Richelieu,  in  place  of  Alex- 
andre Hardy,  for  example,  he  would  doubtless  not 
have  been  exempt  from  falls,  errors,  and  mistakes; 
perhaps,  indeed,  other  enormities  might  be  found  in 
him  than  those  against  which  our  present  taste  revolts 
in  certain  of  his  worst  passages;  but  at  least  his  fail- 
ures would  have  been  solely  according  to  the  nature 


44  IPterre  Corneillc. 

and  trend  of  his  genius;  and  v/hen  he  rose  out  of 
them,  when  he  obtained  sight  of  the  beautiful,  the 
grand,  the  sublime,  he  would  have  rushed  to  it  as 
into  his  own  region,  without  dragging  after  him  the 
baggage  of  rules,  cumbersome  and  puerile  scruples, 
and  a  thousand  petty  hindrances  to  a  vast  and  soaring 
flight.  The  quarrel  of  "  The  Cid,"  arresting  him  at  his 
first  step,  forcing  him  to  return  upon  himself  and  con- 
front his  work  with  rules,  disturbed  for  the  future  that 
prolonged  growth,  full  of  chances,  that  sort  of  potent, 
unconscious  vegetation,  so  to  speak,  for  which  nature 
seemed  to  have  destined  him.  He  took  umbrage,  he 
was  indignant  at  first  at  the  cavillings  of  criticism;  but 
he  inwardly  reflected  on  the  rules  and  precepts  im- 
posed upon  him,  and  ended,  finally,  by  adapting  him- 
self to  them,  and  believing  them. 

The  mortifications  that  followed  closely  on  the  tri- 
umph of  "The  Cid"  carried  him  back  to  his  family  in 
Rouen,  which  place  he  did  not  leave  again  until  1639, 
when  he  returned  to  Paris  with  Horace  and  Cinna  in 
hand.  To  quit  Spain  the  instant  he  had  set  foot  in  it,  to 
push  no  farther  that  glorious  victory  of  "The  Cid,"  to 
renounce,  in  gaiety  of  heart,  all  those  magnanimous 
heroes  who  stretched  their  arms  to  him,  and  turn 
aside  to  fasten  upon  a  Castilian  Rome  on  the  faith  of 
Lucan  and  Seneca,  Spanish  burghers  under  Nero,  was, 
for  Corneille,  not  to  profit  by  his  advantages  and  to 
misinterpret  the  voice  of  his  genius  at  the  very  mo- 
ment when  it  spoke  so  clearly.      But   at   that  time 


Pierre  Corneille.  45 

fashion,  vogue,  carried  minds  more  toward  ancient 
Rome  than  toward  Spain.  Besides  the  amorous  gal- 
lantries and  noble,  conventional  sentiments  attributed 
to  those  old  republicans,  special  occasion  was  given, 
by  producing  them  on  the  stage,  to  apply  the  maxims 
of  State,  and  all  the  political  and  diplomatic  jargon 
that  we  find  in  Balzac  and  in  Gabriel  Naude,  and  to 
which  Richelieu  himself  gave  currency.  Probably 
Corneille  allowed  himself  to  be  seduced  by  these  rea- 
sons of  the  moment;  nevertheless,  out  of  his  very 
error  came  masterpieces. 

I  will  not  follow  him  through  the  various  successes 
that  marked  his  career  during  its  fifteen  finest 
years.  Polyeucte,  Pompee,  Le  Menteur,  Rodogune, 
Heraclius,  Don  Sanche,  and  Nicomede  are  its  enduring 
landmarks.  He  returned  to  imitation  of  the  Spanish 
in  Le  Menteur,  a  comedy  in  which  the  comic  (which 
Corneille  did  not  understand)  is  much  less  to  be  ad- 
mired than  the  imbroglio,  the  movement,  and  the 
fancy.  Again  he  returned  to  the  Castilian  genius  in 
Heraclius,  but  above  all  in  Nicomede  and  Don  Sanche, 
those  two  wonderful  creations,  unique  upon  our 
stage,  which,  coming  in  the  midst  of  the  Fronde,  with 
their  singular  mixture  of  romantic  heroism  and  familiar 
irony,  stirred  up  innumerable  malignant  or  generous 
allusions,  and  won  universal  applause.  Yet  it  was 
shortly  after  these  triumphs,  in  1653,  that  Corneille, 
wounded  by  the  non-success  of  Pertharite,  and 
touched  perhaps  by  Christian  sentiments  and  remorse, 


46  ipferre  CornelUe. 

resolved  to  renounce  the  theatre.  He  was  then 
forty-seven  years  of  age  ;  he  had  just  translated  in 
verse  the  first  chapters  of  the  "Imitation  of  Jesus 
Christ,"  and  he  desired  henceforth  to  devote  the 
remainder  of  his  vigour  to  pious  subjects. 

Corneille  had  married  in  1640,  and  in  spite  of  his 
frequent  journeys  to  Paris  he  lived  habitually  in 
Rouen  with  his  family.  His  brother  Thomas  and  he 
had  married  two  sisters,  and  lived  in  adjoining  houses. 
Both  took  care  of  their  widowed  mother.  Pierre 
had  six  children;  and  as  in  those  days  plays  brought 
more  to  the  actors  than  to  their  authors,  and  as, 
moreover,  he  was  often  not  upon  the  spot  to  watch 
his  interests,  he  scarcely  earned  enough  to  support 
his  numerous  family.  His  nomination  to  the  French 
Academy  did  not  take  place  till  1647.  He  had 
promised,  before  he  was  appointed,  to  arrange  to 
live  in  Paris  the  greater  part  of  the  year;  but  it  does 
not  appear  that  he  did  so.  He  did  not  establish  him- 
self in  the  capital  till  1662,  and  until  then  he  derived 
none  of  the  advantages  that  assiduous  attendance  at 
the  sessions  procures  for  academicians. 

The  literary  morals  of  the  time  were  not  like  ours: 
authors  felt  no  scruple  in  asking  and  receiving  gratu- 
ities from  princes  and  seigneurs.  Corneille,  on  the 
title-page  of  Horace,  says  that  he  "  has  the  honour  to 
belong  to  his  Eminence;  gentlemen  in  those  days 
boasted  of  being  the  domestiques  of  a  prince  or  a 
seigneur.     This  explains  to   us,  and  excuses   in  our 


IPierre  Corneille,  47 

illustrious  poet,  his  singular  dedications  to  Richelieu, 
to  Montauron,  to  Mazarin,  to  Fouquet,  which  so 
unfairly  scandalised  Voltaire.  About  the  same  period 
in  England  the  condition  of  authors  was  no  better, 
and  we  find  very  curious  details  on  this  subject  in 
Johnson's  "Lives  of  the  Poets"  and  Samuel  Pepys's 
"  Diary."  In  Malherbe's  correspondence  with  Peiresc 
there  is  hardly  a  letter  in  which  the  famous  lyric  poet 
does  not  complain  of  receiving  from  King  Henri  more 
compliments  than  money.  These  morals  still  existed 
in  Corneille's  time;  and  even  if  they  were  passing  a 
little  out  of  usage,  his  poverty  and  his  family  burdens 
must  have  prevented  his  emancipating  himself  from 
them.  No  doubt  he  suffered  at  times;  and  he  some- 
where deplores  "  this  feeling,  I  know  not  what,  of 
secret  abasement  "  to  which  a  noble  heart  can  scarcely 
stoop;  but  with  him  necessity  was  stronger  than 
delicacy.  Let  me  say  it  again:  Corneille,  outside  of 
his  sublimity  and  his  pathos,  had  little  skill  and  tact. 
He  carried  into  all  the  relations  of  life  something 
awkward  and  provincial;  his  speech  on  his  reception 
at  the  Academy,  for  instance,  is  a  model  of  bad  taste, 
insipid  praise,  and  pomposity.  Well!  we  must 
judge  in  the  same  way  his  dedication  to  Montauron, 
much  attacked  and  ridiculed  even  at  the  time  it  ap- 
peared. The  worthy  Corneille  lacked  the  sense  of 
fitness  and  propriety;  he  persisted  heavily  where  he 
ought  to  have  glided;  he — like  in  heart  to  his  heroes, 
solid  in  soul,  but  broken  by  fate  —  he  bowed  too  low 


48  ipterre  Corneille. 

in  salutation,  and  struck  his  noble  forehead  on  the 
earth. 

Corneille  imagined,  in  1653,  that  he  renounced  the 
stage.  Pure  illusion!  That  withdrawal,  could  it  have 
been  possible,  would  no  doubt  have  been  better  for 
his  peace  of  mind,  and  perhaps  for  his  fame.  But  he 
had  not  the  kind  of  poetic  temperament  that  could 
impose  upon  itself  at  will  a  continence  of  fifteen 
years  —  as  Racine  did  later.  Encouragement  and  a 
gratuity  from  Fouquet  sufficed  to  bring  him  back  to 
the  stage,  where  he  remained  a  score  of  years  longer, 
till  1674,  waning,  day  by  day,  under  numberless 
mistakes  and  cruel  griefs.  Before  saying  a  few  words 
of  his  old  age  and  death,  let  us  pause  a  moment  to 
sum  up  the  chief  traits  of  his  genius  and  his  work. 

Corneille's  dramatic  form  has  not  the  freedom  of 
fancy  that  Lope  de  Vega  and  Shakespeare  gave  them- 
selves; neither  has  it  the  exactly  regular  severity  to 
which  Racine  subjected  himself  If  he  had  dared, 
if  he  had  come  before  d'Aubignac,  Mairet,  or  Chape- 
lain,  he  would,  I  think,  have  cared  very  little  for 
graduating  and  marshalling  his  acts,  connecting  his 
scenes,  concentrating  his  effects  on  a  single  point  of 
space  and  duration;  he  would  have  written  hap- 
hazard, tangling  and  untangling  the  threads  of  his 
plot,  changing  the  locality  as  it  suited  him,  delaying 
on  the  way,  and  pushing  his  personages  pell-mell 
before  him  to  marriage  or  death.  In  the  midst  of 
this   confusion    beautiful   scenes,    admirable    groups 


Pierre  Corneille.  49 

would  have  detached  themselves  here  and  there;  for 
Corneille  understands  grouping  very  well,  and,  at 
essential  moments,  he  poses  his  personages  most 
dramatically.  He  balances  one  against  the  other, 
defines  them  vigorously  with  a  brief  and  manly  say- 
ing, contrasts  them  by  cutting  repartees,  and  pre- 
sents to  the  spectator's  eye  the  masses  of  a  skilful 
structure.  But  he  had  not  a  genius  sufficiently  artistic 
to  extend  over  an  entire  drama  that  concentric  con- 
figuration which  he  has  realized  in  places;  at  the  same 
time,  his  fancy  was  not  free  or  alert  enough  to  create 
for  itself  a  form,  moving,  undulating,  diffuse,  multi- 
plied, but  not  less  real,  less  beautiful  than  the  other, 
such  as  we  admire  in  certain  plays  of  Shakespeare, 
such  as  the  Schlegels  admire  so  much  in  Calderon. 
Add  to  these  natural  imperfections  the  influence  of 
a  superficial  and  finical  poetic  art,  about  which 
Corneille  overconcerned  himself,  and  you  will  have 
the  secret  of  what  is  ambiguous,  undecided,  and 
incompletely  reckoned  in  the  making  of  his  tragedies. 
His  Discours  and  his  Examens  give  us  numerous 
details  on  this  point,  in  which  we  find  revealed  the 
most  hidden  recesses  of  his  great  mind.  We  see 
how  the  pitless  unity  of  place  frets  him,  and  how 
heartily  he  would  say  to  it:  "  Oh!  you  hamper  me!  " 
and  with  what  pains  he  tries  to  combine  it  with 
''decorum."  He  does  not  always  succeed.  "Pau- 
line," he  writes,  "  comes  to  an  antechamber  to  meet 
Severus  whose  visit  she  ought  to  await  in  her  private 

VOL.  II. — 4. 


50  Pierre  CornelUe. 

apartment."  Pompey  seems  to  disregard  the  pru- 
dence of  the  general  of  an  army,  when,  trusting  to 
Sertorius,  he  goes  to  confer  with  him  in  a  town 
where  the  latter  is  master;  "but  it  was  impossible," 
says  Corneille,  "to  keep  the  unity  of  place  without 
making  him  commit  this  blunder."  But  when  there 
was  absolute  necessity  for  the  action  to  be  carried  on 
in  two  different  places,  the  following  is  the  expedi- 
ent that  Corneille  invents  to  evade  the  rule: 

"  These  two  places  have  no  need  of  different  scenery,  and  neither 
of  the  two  should  ever  be  named,  but  only  the  general  region  in 
which  both  are  situated,  such  as  Paris,  Rome,  Lyons,  Constantinople, 
etc.  This  will  help  to  deceive  the  audience,  who,  seeing  nothing  to 
mark  the  diversity  of  place,  will  not  perceive  it  —  unless  by  malicious 
and  critical  reflection,  of  which  few  are  capable  ;  most  of  them 
attending  eagerly  to  the  action  they  see  represented  before  them." 

He  congratulates  himself  like  a  child  on  the  com- 
plexity of  Heraclius  because  "that  poem  is  so  in- 
volved it  requires  marvellous  attention  ";  and  requests 
us  to  notice  in  Othon  that  "never  was  a  play  seen 
in  which  so  many  marriages  were  proposed  and 
none  concluded," 

Corneille's  personages  are  grand,  generous,  valiant, 
frank,  lofty  of  head,  and  noble  of  heart.  Brought  up 
for  the  most  part  under  austere  discipline,  the  maxims 
by  which  they  rule  their  lives  are  for  ever  on  their 
lips;  and  as  they  never  depart  from  those  maxims 
we  have  no  difficulty  in  recognising  them;  a  glance 
suffices:  which  is  almost  the  contrary  of  Shake- 
speare's personages  and  of  human  beings  in  life.     The 


Pierre  Corneille.  si 

morality  of  his  heroes  is  spotless:  as  fathers,  lovers, 
friends,  or  enemies,  we  admire  and  honour  them  ;  in 
pathetic  parts  their  tone  is  sublime,  it  lifts  the  soul 
and  makes  us  weep.  But  his  rivals  and  his  husbands 
have  sometimes  a  tinge  of  the  ridiculous:  so  has  Don 
Sancho  in  "The  Cid,"  also  Prusias  and  Pertharite.  His 
tyrants  and  his  step-mothers  are  all  of  a  piece  like  his 
heroes,  wicked  from  one  end  to  the  other;  neverthe- 
less, at  sight  of  a  fine  action  it  sometimes  happens 
that  they  face  about  suddenly  to  virtue,  like  Grim- 
oald  and  Arsinoe. 

Corneille's  men  have  formal  and  punctilious  minds: 
they  quarrel  about  etiquette;  they  argue  at  length 
and  wrangle  loudly  with  themselves,  even  in  their 
passions.  There  is  something  of  the  Norman  in  them. 
Auguste,  Pompee  and  others  seem  to  have  studied 
logic  at  Salamanca,  and  to  have  read  Aristotle  with 
the  Arabs.  His  heroines,  his  "adorable  furies,"  nearly 
all  resemble  one  another;  their  love  is  subtle,  over- 
refined,  with  a  purpose;  coming  more  from  the  head 
than  the  heart.  We  feel  that  Corneille  knew  little  of 
women.  Nevertheless,  he  succeeded  in  expressing 
in  Chimene  and  Pauline  that  virtuous  power  of  self- 
sacrifice  that  he  himself  had  practised  in  his  youth. 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  after  his  return  to  the  theatre 
in  1659,  and  in  all  the  numerous  plays  of  his  decad- 
ence —  Attila,  Berenice,  Pulcherie,  Surena, —  Cor- 
neille had  a  mania  for  mingling  love  in  everything, 
just   as  La   Fontaine   had  for   introducing   Plato.     It 


52  ipterre  Cornellle. 

seems  as  though  the  successes  of  Quinault  and  Racine 
enticed  him  to  that  ground,  and  that  he  wanted  to 
read  a  lesson  to  "those  tender  ones"  as  he  called 
them.  He  imagined  that  in  his  day  he  had  been  still 
more  gallant  and  amorous  than  those  "young  flaxen 
wigs,"  and  he  never  spoke  of  other  times  without 
shaking  his  head  like  an  elderly  swain. 

Corneille's  style  is,  to  my  thinking,  the  merit  by 
which  he  excels.  Voltaire,  in  his  commentary,  ex- 
hibits on  this  point,  as  on  others,  a  sovereign  injust- 
ice, and  also  what  may  be  called  great  ignorance  of 
the  origins  of  our  language.  He  blames  his  author  at 
every  turn  for  having  neither  grace  nor  elegance  nor 
clearness;  he  measures,  pen  in  hand,  the  height  of 
the  metaphors,  and  when  they  exceed  somewhat  he 
calls  them  gigantic.  He  translates  and  disguises  in 
prose  Corneille's  lofty  and  sonorous  phrases,  which 
suit  so  finely  the  bearing  of  his  heroes,  and  asks  if 
that  is  speaking  and  writing  French.  He  churlishly 
calls  "solecism"  what  he  ought  to  describe  as 
"  idiom  " — namely  the  construction,  or  form  of  speech 
peculiar  to  a  special  language;  a  thing  that  is  com- 
pletely lacking  to  the  narrow,  symmetrical,  abbrevi- 
ated French  language  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Corneille's  style,  with  all  its  negligences,  seems  to 
me  one  of  the  greatest  manners  of  the  century  that 
had  Moliere  and  Bossuet.  The  touch  of  the  poet  is 
rough,  severe,  vigorous.  I  compare  him  to  a  sculptor, 
who,  working  the  clay  to  express  heroic  portraiture, 


Ipietre  Corneille.  53 

employs  no  instrument  but  his  tliumb,  and,  kneading 
thus  his  work,  gives  it  a  supreme  character  of  life 
itself  with  all  the  jostling  incidents  that  accompany 
and  complete  it;  but  all  such  proceeding  is  incorrect, 
it  is  not  polished,  not  "proper,"  as  they  say.  There 
is  little  painting  or  colour  in  Corneille's  style;  it  is 
warm  rather  than  brilliant;  it  turns  willingly  to- the 
abstract;  imagination  and  fancy  give  way  to  thought 
and  to  reasoning.  It  ought  to  please  statesmen,  ge- 
ometricians, soldiers,  and  others  who  enjoy  the  styles 
of  Demosthenes,  Pascal,  and  Caesar. 

In  short,  Corneille,  pure  genius  but  incomplete, 
with  his  lofty  aspects  and  his  defects,  gives  me  the 
impression  of  those  great  trees  that  are  bare,  rugged, 
sad,  monotonous  as  to  their  trunk,  with  branches  and 
sombre  foliage  at  their  summit  only.  They  are  strong, 
powerful,  gigantic,  with  little  verdure;  sap  in  abun- 
dance rises;  but  expect  neither  shelter,  shade,  nor 
bloom.  They  leaf  out  late,  their  leaves  fall  early,  yet 
they  live  on,  half-despoiled;  but  when  their  hoary 
brow  has  cast  its  last  leaves  to  the  autumn  wind  their 
perennial  nature  puts  out,  here  and  there,  belated 
branches  and  green  twigs.  And  when  at  last  they 
die,  their  groans,  the  cracking  of  their  fissures,  remind 
one  of  that  armoured  trunk  to  which  Lucan  compared 
the  great  Pompey. 

Such  was  the  old  age  of  our  great  Corneille;  a 
ruined,  furrowed,  bald  old  age,  dropping  piece  by 
piece,  but  of  which  the  heart  was  the  last  to  die.     He 


54  ipierre  Corneille. 

had  put  his  whole  life  and  all  his  soul  into  the  theatre. 
Outside  of  it  he  was  worth  but  little;  brusque,  heavy, 
taciturn,  and  melancholy,  his  grand  wrinkled  forehead 
was  never  illuminated,  his  dulled,  veiled  eye  never 
sparkled,  his  voice,  harsh  and  toneless,  had  no  em- 
phasis unless  he  spoke  of  the  drama,  and  especially 
his  own.  He  did  not  know  how  to  converse,  he 
was  out  of  place  in  society,  and  only  saw  M.  de  La 
Rochefoucauld,  Cardinal  de  Retz,  and  Mme.  de  Sevigne 
for  the  purpose  of  reading  to  them  his  plays.  He 
became  with  age  more  unhappy  and  morose.  The 
success  of  his  younger  rivals  troubled  him;  beseemed 
distressed  and  nobly  jealous  of  it,  like  a  vanquished 
bull  or  an  old  athlete.  When  Racine  parodied  this 
line  in  "The  Cid" 

"  The  wrinkles  on  his  brow  engrave  his  deeds  " 

Corneille,  who  could  not  understand  a  jest,  exclaimed, 
naively:  "  Is  it  a  young  man's  business  to  come  here 
and  turn  people's  verses  into  ridicule.?"  On  another 
occasion  he  said  to  Chevreau:  "  I  have  taken  leave  of 
the  drama;  my  poesy  has  gone  with  my  teeth." 

Corneille  had  lost  two  sons,  and  his  poverty  scarcely 
enabled  him  to  provide  for  his  other  children.  A  delay 
in  the  payment  of  his  pension  brought  him  almost  to 
want  on  his  deathbed:  we  know  the  noble  conduct  of 
Boileau  on  that  occasion.  The  old  man  died  on  the  night 
of  September  30,  1684,  in  the  rue  d'Argenteul,  where 
he  lodged.  Charlotte  Corday  was  the  great-grand- 
daughter of  one  of  Pierre  Corneille's  daughters. 


III. 
nDabcmoieelle  ^c  Scuberi^* 


55 


III. 
/IDaDemoiselle  De  Scu&eri?, 

THIS  is  not  a  rehabilitation  tiiat  I  am  about  to 
attempt;  but  it  is  well  to  put  correct  ideas 
to  certain  names  that  recur  frequently.  The 
books  of  Mile,  de  Scudery  are  no  longer  read;  but  her 
name  is  still  cited;  she  serves  to  designate  a  literary 
class,  a  fashion  of  intellect,  and  the  cultivation  of 
belles-lettres  at  a  celebrated  period :  it  is  a  medal  that 
has  almost  passed  into  circulation  and  become  a  coin. 
What  is  its  value  and  its  charm  ?  Let  us  do  with 
Mile,  de  Scudery  as  she  herself  was  so  fond  of  doing 
with  others:  let  us  examine,  distinguish,  and  analyse. 
This  young  woman,  "  of  extraordinary  merit,"  as 
they  said  of  her,  was  born  at  Havre,  in  1607,  under 
Henri  IV;  she  did  not  die  until  1701,  at  ninety-four 
years  of  age,  toward  the  close  of  the  reign  of  "Louis 
quatorzieme,"  as  she  liked  to  call  him.  Her  father 
was  from  Provence;  he  removed  to  Normandy  and 
married  there,  not  without  transmitting  to  his  child- 
ren something  of  his  southern  temperament.  The  son, 
Georges  de  Scudery,   is  celebrated  for  his  pompous 

57 


58  /lDa^emoisc^e  t>c  Scu^eri?, 

verses,  his  braggadocio,  and  his  rhodomontades,  in 
which  he  one  day  had  the  misfortune  to  meet  and 
affront  Corneille;  for  which  posterity  has  never  for- 
given him.  Mile.  Madeleine  de  Scudery  was  far  more 
sensible  than  her  brother;  Normandy,  if  I  may  ven- 
ture to  say  it,  was  much  more  apparent  in  her;  she 
reasoned,  she  discussed,  she  argued  on  matters  of 
mind  like  the  cleverest  lawyer  or  pettifogger.  But 
she,  too,  had  her  share  of  family  vanity;  she  always 
said:  "Since  the  overthrow  of  our  house";  "You 
would  really  think  she  was  talking  of  the  overthrow 
of  the  Greek  empire,"  says  the  malicious  Tallemant 
des  Reaux.  The  Scuderys  claimed,  in  fact,  to  have 
issued  from  a  very  noble,  very  ancient,  and  "ever 
warlike  "  family  of  Neapolitan  origin,  but  established 
for  centuries  in  Provence.  In  transforming  into  her 
novels  the  persons  of  her  acquaintance  under  the 
guise  of  heroes  and  princes,  Mile,  de  Scudery  felt  her- 
self among  her  own  kind. 

Having  lost  her  parents  while  very  young,  she  was 
brought  up  in  the  country  by  an  uncle,  a  well-in- 
formed and  worthy  man,  who  gave  great  care  to  her 
education,  which  was,  in  fact,  much  better  than 
young  girls  were  accustomed  to  receive  in  those  days. 
Writing,  spelling,  dancing,  drawing,  painting,  needle- 
work, she  learned  them  all,  says  Conrart,  and  she 
divined  for  herself  what  they  did  not  teach  her. 

"As  she  had,"  continues  Conrart  [first  secretary  of  the  French 
Academy],  "a  prodigious  imagination,  an  excellent  memory,  an  ex- 


MADEMOISELLE  MADELEINE   DE  SCUDERY. 
From  an  old  print. 


/IDa&emoiselle  C>e  Scu&eri?.  59 

quisite  judgment,  a  lively  temper,  naturally  inclined  to  understand  all 
she  saw  done  that  was  curious,  and  all  she  heard  said  that  was  laud- 
able, soon  taught  herself  other  things:  such  as  related  to  agriculture, 
gardening,  household  management,  country  life,  cookery,  the  causes 
and  effects  of  illness,  the  composition  of  many  remedies,  perfumes, 
fragrant  waters,  and  useful  or  delectable  distillations  for  necessity  or 
pleasure.  She  had  a  fancy  to  know  how  to  play  the  lute,  and  took 
some  lessons  with  fair  success." 

But  the  lute  took  too  much  time,  and,  without  re- 
nouncing it  wholly,  she  preferred  to  turn  more  par- 
ticularly to  occupations  of  the  mind.  She  learned 
Italian  and  Spanish  perfectly;  her  principal  pleasures 
were  reading  and  choice  conversation,  of  which  she 
was  not  deprived  in  her  neighbourhood.  The  pic- 
ture that  Conrart  gives  us  of  her  early  education 
reminds  us  of  that  of  Mme.  de  Genlis  in  Bourgogne; 
and  I  will  say  at  once  that  in  studying  Mile,  de 
Scudery  closely,  as  I  have  just  done,  she  seems  to  me 
to  have  had  much  of  Mme.  de  Genlis  in  her,  with 
virtue  added.  To  learn  all,  to  know  all,  from  the 
properties  of  simples  and  the  making  of  preserves  to 
the  anatomy  of  the  human  heart;  to  be,  from  her  earli- 
est years,  on  the  footing  of  a  marvel  of  perfection;  to 
draw  from  all  she  saw  in  society  matter  for  novels, 
portraits,  moral  dissertations,  compliments,  and  les- 
sons; to  combine  a  mass  of  pedantry  with  extreme 
delicacy  of  observation  and  a  perfect  knowledge  of 
the  world, — these  are  traits  common  to  both  of  them; 
the  differences,  however,  are  not  less  essential  to 
note.  Mile,  de  Scudery,  who  had  "a  very  good  ap- 
pearance"  and  a  rather  grand  air,   had  no  beauty: 


6o  /IDa&emoiseUe  t)e  Scu&er^. 

"She  is  a  tall,  thin,  dark  person,  with  a  very  long 
face,"  says  Tallemant.  She  was  gifted  with  moral 
qualities  which  have  never  been  denied.  Respect 
and  esteem  were,  to  her,  inseparable  from  the  idea  of 
celebrity  and  fame.  In  a  word,  she  was  a  Genlis  of 
the  date  of  Lous  XIII,  full  of  force  and  virtue,  who 
stayed  a  virgin  and  an  old  maid  until  she  was  ninety- 
four  years  of  age. 

We  should  hear  her  speak  of  herself,  whenever  she 
can  do  so  under  a  slight  disguise.  In  most  of  the 
dialogues  in  which  her  personages  converse,  she  finds 
means  to  make  the  one  who  replies  remark  after 
each  pretty  thing  she  produces:  "All  that  you  say  is 
so  well  said" — "That  is  marvellously  thought  out." 
Or,  to  use  a  word  she  affects:  "That  is  admirably 
distinguished  [demele]."  This  indirect  compliment  is 
addressed  to  herself  again  and  again;  she  is  inex- 
haustible in  formulas  for  self-approval.  In  the  tenth 
volume  of  Le  Grand  Cyrus  she  partly  pictures  herself 
in  the  personage  of  Sappho,  and  the  name  stayed  by 
her,  "The  illustrious  Sappho";  those  who  had  read 
Le  Grand  Cyrus  never  called  her  otherwise.  There 
are  some  passages  of  that  Portrait,  for  which  Mile,  de 
Scudery  had  certainly  examined  herself.  After  speak- 
ing of  the  long  line  of  ancestors  of  which  her  heroine 
could  boast,  she  says: 

"Sappho  has  also  this  advantage,  that  her  father  and  mother 
had,  both  of  them,  much  mind  and  much  virtue;  but  she  had  the 
misfortune  to  lose  them  so  early  that  she   could  receive  from  them 


/IDabemoiselle  &e  Scut)err.  6i 

only  the  first  inclinations  to  good,  for  she  was  six  years  old  when 
they  died.  It  is  true  that  they  left  her  under  guidance  of  a  female 
relative.     .     .     ." 

The  uncle  is  here  changed  to  a  female  relative,  but 
the  rest  refers  plainly  to  herself: 

"  in  fact,  madame,"  [this  is  a  narrative  which  one  of  the  person- 
ages is  supposed  to  address  to  the  Queen  of  Pontis],  "  1  think  that 
in  all  Greece  there  is  no  one  to  be  compared  with  Sappho.  I  will  not 
stop  to  tell  you,  madame,  what  her  childhood  was,  for  she  was  so 
little  of  a  child  that  at  twelve  years  of  age  people  began  to  speak  of 
her  as  a  person  whose  beauty,  intellect,  and  judgment  were  already 
formed  and  were  causing  admiration  to  every  one.  I  will  merely  tell 
you  that  never  did  persons  observe  in  any  one,  no  matter  who,  nobler 
inclinations  or  greater  facility  in  learning  all  that  she  wished  to  know." 

Facing  courageously  the  question  of  beauty,  she  is 
still  thinking  of  herself  when  she  says: 

"  Though  you  hear  me  speak  of  Sappho  as  the  most  marvellous  and 
most  charming  person  in  all  Greece,  you  must  not  imagine  that  her 
beauty  is  one  of  the  greatest  beauties  on  earth  ...  As  for  complex- 
ion, hers  is  not  of  the  utmost  whiteness  ;  but  it  has  such  a  fine 
glow  that  you  may  say  that  it  is  beautiful;  but  what  Sappho  has 
that  is  sovereignly  agreeable  is  that  her  eyes  are  so  fine,  so  lovely,  so 
loving,  so  full  of  intelligence,  that  one  can  neither  sustain  their  bril- 
liancy nor  detach  one's  own  eyes  from  them.  .  .  .  That  which 
makes  their  greatest  brilliancy  is  that  never  was  there  greater  contrast 
than  that  of  the  white  and  the  black  of  her  eyes.  Nevertheless  this 
great  contrast  has  nothing  harsh  about  it.     .     .     ." 

We  remark  here  the  negligence  of  her  style,  the 
repetitions,  etc.  I  abridge  much  (which  Mile,  de 
Scudery  herself  never  did) ;  I  leave  out  as  1  go  along  a 
great  many  "but's,"  and  "for"s,"and  "evenso's."  But 
from   these  few  traits  we  can  do  more  than  merely 


62  /IDaC)emoiselle  &e  5cuC)ers. 

perceive  the  ideal  she  wishes  to  present  of  her  beauty, 
or,  if  you  choose,  the  corrective  of  her  plainness. 
Such  the  Sappho  of  the  Marais  may  have  appeared  to 
friendly  eyes  when  Chapelain,  passing  in  those  days 
for  a  great  epic  poet,  compared  her,  intrepidly,  to  La 
Pucelle;  and  Pellisson,  ugliest  of  beaux  esprits,  made 
her  his  passionate  declaration. 

In  this  same  portrait  of  Sappho,  which  is  precious 
to  us,  she  comes  at  last  to  charms  of  mind,  on  which 
she  enlarges  with  redoubled  complacency: 

"  The  charms  of  her  mind  surpass  by  far  those  of  her  beauty.  In 
truth,  she  has  it"  [mind]  "  of  such  vast  extent  that  we  may  say  that 
what  she  does  not  understand  cannot  be  understood  by  any  one;  and 
she  has  such  a  faculty  to  learn  easily  all  she  wants  to  know  that,  al- 
though one  has  seldom  heard  it  said  that  Sappho  ever  learned  anything, 
she  nevertheless  knows  all  things." 

Then  follows  the  enumeration  of  her  talents — poesy, 
prose,  impromptu  songs: 

"She  even  expresses  very  delicately  sentiments  that  are  most  diffi- 
cult to  express,  and  she  knows  so  well  the  anatonvy  of  an  amorous 
heart  (if  it  is  permissible  to  speak  thus)  that  she  can  describe  exactly 
all  the  jealousies,  all  the  anxieties,  all  the  impatience,  all  the  joys,  all 
the  dislikes,  all  the  murmurings,  all  the  despair,  all  the  hopes,  all  the 
rebellions,  and  all  those  tumultuous  feelings  that  are  never  well  known 
except  by  those  who  feel  them  or  have  felt  them." 

It  was  one  of  Mile,  de  Scudery's  claims  that  she 
knew  and  could  describe  the  most  secret  emotions  of 
love  without  ever  having  felt  them  otherwise  than  by 
reflection;  and  it  is  true  that  she  often  succeeded  in 
whatever  was  delicate  and  refined,  in  short,  in  all  that 
was  not  the  actual  flame.     "  You  explain  that  so  ad- 


/roa^emofselle  &e  Scuber^.  63 

mirably,"  we  might  say  to  her,  like  a  person  of  one  of 
her  dialogues,  "that  if  you  had  done  nothing  all  your 
life  but  be  in  love  you  could  not  express  it  better." 
— "Though  I  never  was  in  love,"  she  would  answer 
with  her  prettiest  smile,  "  1  have  friends  who  have 
been  so  for  me,  and  they  have  taught  me  how  to 
speak  of  it."  That  is  wit,  and  Mile,  de  Scudery  had 
a  great  deal  of  it. 

In  this  Portrait  of  Sappho  she  insists  strongly  that 
Sappho  not  only  knows  to  the  depths  whatever  re- 
lates to  love,  but  that  she  does  not  know  less  all  that 
concerns  gefierosity;  and  this  marvel  of  knowledge 
and  nature  is  crowned,  according  to  her,  with 
modesty: 

"  In  fact,  her  conversation  is  so  natural,  so  easy,  so  polite,  that  she 
is  never  heard  to  talk  in  general  conversation  of  any  but  those  things 
that  a  person  of  intelligence  might  say  without  having  learned  all  that 
she  knows.  It  is  not  that  persons  who  understand  things  do  not 
know  very  well  that  nature  alone  could  not  have  opened  her  mind  as 
it  has  been  opened;  but  it  is  that  she  takes  such  care  to  remain  always 
in  the  proprieties  of  her  sex,  that  she  almost  always  speaks  only  of 
that  which  ladies  should  speak  of." 

I  leave  the  faults  of  grammar.  But  here  we  see  a 
Sappho,  both  wise  and  modest,  wholly  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  in  accordance  with  the  last  good 
taste  of  the  Place-Royale  and  the  hotel  Rambouillet. 

Mile,  de  Scudery  made  no  delay  in  appearing  there; 
provinces  could  not  keep  her  long.  Having  lost  her 
uncle,  she  hesitated  between  Paris  and  Rouen;  but 
her  brother,  who  was  taking  rank  among  dramatic 


64  /IDaC)emoi5eUe  t>c  Scu&er^. 

authors  and  whose  plays  were  succeeding  at  the  hotel 
de  Bourgogne,  persuaded  her  to  settle  in  the  capital. 
She  appeared  to  advantage  from  the  start;  was 
greeted  and  extolled  by  the  best  society,  and  began 
to  write  novels;  without,  however,  putting  her  name 
to  them,  but  hiding  behind  that  of  her  vainglorious 
brother,  Ibrahim  ou  I' Illustre  Bassa  began  to  ap- 
pear in  1641 ;  Ariamene  on  Le  Grand  Cyrus,  in  1650; 
and  Clelie,  in  1654, 

The  true  date  of  Mile,  de  Scudery  is  in  those  years, 
the  period  of  the  Regency,  the  fine  years  of  Anne  of 
Austria,  before  and  after  the  Fronde;  and  her  fame 
lasted  without  check  of  any  kind  until  Boileau  attacked 
it,  like  the  kill-joy  that  he  was:  "That  Despreaux," 
said  Segrais,  "thinks  of  nothing  but  talking  of  him- 
self and  criticising  others;  why  should  he  speak  ill  of 
Mile,  de  Scudery  as  he  does .?" 

To  understand  fully  the  success  of  Mile,  de  Scudery 
and  the  direction  that  she  gave  to  her  talent,  we  must 
picture  to  ourselves  the  higher  society  of  Paris  such  as 
it  was  before  the  period  when  Louis  XIV  began  to 
reign  for  himself.  For  some  years  a  taste  for  things 
of  the  mind,  for  literary  bel  esprit  had  existed ;  into 
which  entered  more  zeal  and  emulation  than  dis- 
cernment and  knowledge.  The  novel  of  d'  Urfe,  the 
Letters  of  Balzac,  the  great  success  of  plays,  those  of 
Corneille  and  other  writers  in  vogue,  the  protection, 
slightly  pedantic,  but  real  and  efficacious  of  Cardinal 
de  Richelieu,  the  foundation  of  the  French  Academy 


/Il^a^emolselIe  &e  Scu&eri?.  65 

— all  these  causes  had  developed  a  spirit  of  inquiry, 
especially  among  women,  who  felt  that  the  moment 
had  come  to  bring  society  to  their  own  level.  People 
were  freeing  themselves  from  antiquity  and  the 
learned  languages  ;  they  wanted  to  know  their 
mother-tongue,  and  they  looked  to  the  grammar- 
ians by  profession.  Men  of  the  world  made  them- 
selves intermediaries  between  scholars,  properly 
so-called,  and  the  salons:  they  desired  to  please 
as  well  as  to  instruct.  But  mingled  with  these  first 
efforts  of  a  serious  and  polished  society  was  great 
inexperience.  To  do  Mile,  de  Scudery  all  the  justice 
that  is  her  due,  and  to  assign  her  her  true  title,  we 
ought  to  consider  her  as  one  of  the  instructors  of 
society  at  this  moment  of  transition  and  formation. 
It  was  her  role  and,  in  a  great  measure,  her  design. 

In  the  Portrait  and  history  of  Sappho,  which  can  be 
read  toward  the  end  of  the  Grand  Cyrus,  she  shows 
to  what  a  point  she  was  filled  with  this  design,  and 
she  brought  to  it  more  discrimination  and  tact  than 
we,  judging  her  afar  off  from  her  reputation,  might 
have  expected.  Do  not  think  her  a  professed  bet 
esprit;  she  repudiates  it  from  the  start:  "There  is 
nothing  more  annoying,"  she  thinks,  "than  to  be  a 
bet  esprit,  or  to  be  treated  as  being  one  when  our 
heart  is  noble  and  we  are  of  certain  birth."  She  feels 
more  than  any  one  the  impropriety  of  clever  persons, 
especially  women,  being  received  by  society  on  that 
footing;  and  she  exposes  it  like  a  young  woman  of 

VOL.  II. 5. 


66  /TOa^emotselle  C>e  Scu&et:)?. 

good  sense  and  a  lady  who  has  suffered  from  it.  One 
of  the  greatest  of  these  inconveniences,  and  the  one 
that  gives  her  the  most  annoyance,  is  that  persons  in 
society  fancy  they  cannot  approach  bel  esprits  as  they 
would  other  people  but  speak  to  them  always  in  the 
grand  manner: 

"  For  I  find  men  and  women  speaking  to  me  sometimes  with 
strange  embarrassment,  because  they  have  taken  it  into  their  heads 
that  1  must  not  be  talked  to  like  other  persons.  In  vain  do  I  speak 
of  the  fine  weather,  the  news  of  the  day,  and  all  the  other  things  that 
make  ordinary  conversation;  they  always  return  to  their  point;  they 
are  so  convinced  that  I  compel  myself  to  speak  thus,  that  they  com- 
pel themselves  to  talk  of  other  things  that  weary  me  so  that  I  would 
gladly  not  be  Sappho  when  this  happens  to  me." 

I  beg  pardon  of  my  readers  for  all  these  "that's  "  in 
favour  of  the  idea,  which  is  a  right  one.  Mile,  de 
Scudery  makes  many  objections  addressed  to  herself 
on  the  inconveniences  of  being  a  female  bel  esprit 
and  a  femme  savanie.  Long  before  Moliere  she  said 
more  than  one  very  sensible  thing  on  this  subject. 
But  let  us  not  forget  the  moment  of  social  life  and  the 
sort  of  difficulties  with  which  she  had  to  do.  She 
discusses  very  carefully  the  question  of  whether  it 
would  be  well  for  women,  in  general,  to  be  taught 
more  than  they  then  knew:  "Though  I  am  the  de- 
clared enemy  of  all  women  who  play  the  learned,  I 
nevertheless  think  the  other  extreme  very  condemn- 
able,  and  I  am  often  shocked  to  see  many  women  of 
rank  so  grossly  ignorant  that,  in  my  opinion,  they 
dishonour  our  sex." 


/IDat>emoiselle  De  Scu^erg.  67 

There,  indeed,  was  a  defect  that  needed  remedy 
at  once.  The  education  of  persons  of  rank  was  at 
that  date,  1641-1654,  most  defective.  What  ignor- 
ance, what  strange  negligence  even  in  women  of 
intelligence  and  fame!  Mme.  de  Sable,  the  wise  and 
witty  friend  of  La  Rochefoucauld  could  not  spell. 

"  It  is  certain,"  says  Mile,  de  Scudery,  "that  there  are  women  who 
speak  well  and  write  ill,  and  who  write  ill  purely  through  their  own 
fault  ...  It  is,  as  I  think,"  she  adds,  "an  intolerable  error  in 
women  to  wish  to  speak  well  and  yet  be  willing  to  write  badly  .  .  . 
Most  ladies  seem  to  write  with  the  intention  not  to  be  understood,  so 
little  connection  is  there  between  their  words,  and  so  fantastic  is  their 
spelling.  Yet  these  very  ladies,  who  boldly  make  such  gross  blunders 
in  writing  and  lose  all  their  minds  when  they  begin  to  write,  will  laugh 
a  whole  day  at  some  poor  foreigner  who  may  have  said  one  word  for 
another." 

One  of  the  corrections  that  Mile,  de  Scudery  urged, 
and  to  which  she  contributed  most,  was  that  of 
bringing  harmony  between  the  manner  of  speaking 
and  that  of  writing.  She  made  persons  of  her  own 
sex  blush  at  their  inconsistency.  All  her  ideas  on  the 
education  of  women  are  very  just  and  well-considered 
in  theory: 

"  Seriously,"  she  writes,  "  can  there  be  anything  more  whimsical 
than  the  way  the  education  of  women  is  usually  carried  on  ?  They  are 
not  to  be  coquettish  or  gallant,  yet  they  are  permitted  to  learn  care- 
fully all  that  appertains  to  gallantry,  without  allowing  them  to  know 
anything  that  might  fortify  their  virtue  or  occupy  their  mind.  All 
those  reprimands  made  to  them  in  early  youth,  about  not  being  clean, 
not  dressing  in  good  style,  not  attending  sufficiently  to  the  lessons 
that  their  dancing  or  their  music-master  gives  them,  do  they  not  prove 
what  I  say  ?  And  what  is  singular  is,  that  a  woman  who  can  dance 
with  propriety  only  five  or  six  years  of  her  life,  spends  ten  or  a  dozen 


68  /IDaDemoiselle  ^c  Scu^er^. 

in  continually  learning  what  she  can  use  for  only  five  or  six ;  but  this 
same  person  is  obliged  to  have  judgment  till  she  dies,  and  to  talk  to 
her  last  breath,  yet  she  is  never  taught  anything  to  make  her  speak 
more  agreeably  and  act  with  more  decorum." 

Her  conclusion,  which  she  gives  with  some  reserve, 
(for  in  a  matter,  she  says,  that  touches  "diversity  of 
minds"  there  cannot  be  "universal  law"),  her  con- 
clusion, I  say,  is  that  in  asking  that  women  should 
know  more  than  they  do  she  does  not  wish  that  they 
should  act  or  speak  as  learned  women: 

"  1  want  it  to  be  said  of  a  person  of  my  sex  that  she  knows  a  hun- 
dred things  of  which  she  does  not  boast;  that  she  has  an  enlightened 
mind,  that  she  comprehends  fine  books,  that  she  speaks  well,  writes 
correctly,  and  understands  society;  but  I  do  not  wish  it  to  be  said  of 
her:  'She  is  a  learned  woman ';  for  the  two  characters  are  so  differ- 
ent that  they  do  not  resemble  each  other  in  any  way." 

This  is  reason;  of  which  there  is  a  great  deal  in  Mile, 
de  Scudery's  books;  mingled,  it  is  true,  with  far  too 
much  argument  and  dissertation,  and  drowned  in 
what  seems  in  these  days  romantic  extravagance. 

That  which  to  us  is  extravagance  was,  neverthe- 
less, the  very  thing  that  caused  instruction  to  pass 
from  hand  to  hand,  and  reach  more  surely  those  to 
whom  it  was  addressed.  Tallemant  tells  us  that  in 
speaking  she  had  a  masterful  and  preaching  tone  that 
was  not  agreeable:  this  tone  was  disguised  in  her 
novels  by  passing  through  the  lips  of  her  personages, 
and  to-day  it  requires  some  study  to  find  her  didacti- 
cism. Of  real  imagination  and  invention  Mile,  de 
Scudery  had  none  at  all;  when  she  wanted  to  con- 


/IDa&emoiselle  ^e  5cut)er^.  69 

struct  or  invent  a  tale  she  took  some  plot  in  use  at 
the  moment;  she  supplied  herself  freely  from  the 
shops  and  the  wardrobes  in  vogue;  she  copied  the 
plot  of  d'Urfe  in  Astree.  So  doing,  she  flattered  her- 
self she  allied  fiction  with  history,  art  with  actuality: 
"  It  is  never  permissible  in  a  wise  man,"  she  said,  "to 
invent  things  that  cannot  be  believed.  The  true  art 
of  falsehood  is  to  resemble  truth."  This  was  part  of 
a  conversation  in  Clelie  where  they  discussed  the 
"  manner  of  inventing  a  tale  and  composing  a  novel." 
A  little  more  and  Mile,  de  Scudery  would  have 
preached  observation  of  nature:  she  makes  the  poet 
Anacreon  utter  almost  as  good  rules  of  rhetoric  as  we 
find  in  Quintilian.  It  is  a  pity  she  did  not  put  them 
into  practice. 

To  speak  to-day  of  Mile,  de  Scudery's  novels,  and 
to  analyse  them  would  be  impossible  without  calum- 
niating her,  so  ridiculous  would  they  seem.  Too 
much  of  what  was  really  the  absurdity  of  the  times 
would  be  attributed  to  her.  To  rightly  appreciate 
her  novels  as  such,  we  must  go  back  to  the  models 
that  were  set  before  her,  and  write  the  history  of  a 
whole  section.  What  strikes  us  most  at  a  first  glance 
is  the  way  she  takes  the  personages  of  her  acquaint- 
ance and  her  society  and  transforms  them  into  Greeks, 
Romans,  Persians,  and  Carthaginians,  and  makes  them 
perform  in  the  principal  events  very  nearly  the  same 
role  that  is  assigned  to  them  in  history;  all  the  while 
making  them   think   and  talk   precisely  as  she  saw 


70  /IDa&emoi3elle  &e  Scu5er^. 

them  in  Paris.  Hamilcar  is  the  poet  Sarasin;  Her- 
minius  is  Pellisson;  Conrart  becomes  Cleodamas  and 
has,  near  Agrigentum,  a  pretty  country-house,  de- 
scribed at  length,  which  is  no  other  than  that  of 
Athys,  near  Paris.  If  she  meets  an  historical  person- 
age, she  at  once  puts  him  on  a  level  with  the  men  of 
her  acquaintance;  she  tells  us  of  Brutus,  for  instance, 
he  who  condemned  his  own  sons  and  drove  out  the 
Tarquins;  that  he  was  born  with  "the  most  gallant, 
gentlest,  and  most  agreeable  mind  in  the  world"; 
and  of  the  poet  Alcaeus  she  remarks  that  he  was  "  a 
clever  lad,  full  of  wit  and  a  great  intriguer."  The 
actions  and  behaviour  of  all  these  personages  (as  she 
travesties  them)  are  almost  in  keeping  with  her  fac- 
titious method  of  presenting  them;  a  glaze  of  falsity 
covers  them  all. 

But  how,  you  will  ask,  could  such  novels  obtain  so 
much  vogue  and  credit  ?  How  could  the  youth  of 
Mme.  de  Sevigne  and  Mme.  de  La  Fayette  have  fed  upon 
them  }  In  the  first  place,  persons  in  those  days  had 
no  real  idea  of  the  spirit  of  divers  times,  or  of  the 
profound  differences  in  manners  and  morals  through- 
out history.  Besides  which,  nearly  all  the  personages 
who  figured  in  Mile,  de  Scudery's  novels  were  living 
and  contemporary  beings,  whose  names  were  known, 
whose  portraits  and  characters  were  recognised,  from 
Le  Grand  Cyrus,  thought  to  be  the  Great  Conde,  to 
Doralise,  who  was  Mile.  Robineau.  All  these  per- 
sonages, even  the   most  secondary,  were  known  in 


/IDa^emoisellc  De  ScuC>er^.  71 

society;  the  key  was  passed  round,  the  masks  were 
named;  and  even  to-day,  when  we  know  the  real 
names,  we  are  not  entirely  without  curiosity  as  we 
glance  through  her  pages. 

"You  could  not  believe,"  says  Tallemant,  "how 
pleased  the  ladies  are  to  appear  in  her  novels,  or,  to 
speak  correctly,  to  have  their  Portraits  seen  there;  for 
nothing  but  the  character  of  the  personages  will  be 
found,  their  actions  not  at  all.  Some,  however,  have 
complained  of  them.  .  .  ."  Among  those  who 
complained  was  one  of  the  wittiest  women  of  that 
period,  who  said  many  a  good  thing  that  has  since 
come  down  to  us.  In  the  fourth  volume  of  Le  Grand 
Cyrus  Mile,  de  Scudery  gives  the  portrait  of  Mme. 
Cornuel  under  the  name  of  Zenocrite,  making  her  one 
of  the  most  agreeable  and  most  formidable  satirists  of 
Lycia.  The  Portrait  is  very  exact.  Mme.  Cornuel 
justified  the  reputation  given  her  of  a  bold  satirist  by 
saying  of  Mile,  de  Scudery,  who  was  very  dark- 
skinned,  that  "anybody  could  see  she  was  des- 
tined by  Providence  to  blot  paper,  for  she  sweated 
ink  from  every  pore."  Moliere's  Dorine  could  not 
have  said  more. 

What  is  remarkable,  and  really  distinguished  in 
Mile,  de  Scudery's  novels  is  the  Conversations  they 
contain,  for  which  she  had  a  singular  talent,  a  true 
vocation.  She  made  later,  after  her  novels  had  gone 
out  of  fashion,  extracts  from  these  Conversations, 
which  appeared  successively  in  ten  little  volumes  (ten 


72  /lDa^emoiselle  De  Scuber^. 

was  her  number  and  she  did  not  go  beyond  it).  "  Mile, 
de  Scudery  has  just  sent  me  two  little  volumes  of 
'Conversations,'"  wrote  Mme.  de  Sevigne  to  her 
daughter,  September  25,  1680.  "It  is  impossible 
that  they  should  not  be  good  when  no  longer  sub- 
merged in  her  great  novel."  These  little  volumes, 
and  others  of  the  same  kind  which  survive  and  do 
credit  to  Mile,  de  Scudery's  old  age,  are  still  sought 
for  by  inquiring  minds,  and  those  to  whom  nothing 
that  concerns  the  great  century  is  indifferent.  It  is 
not  uncommon  to  hear  it  said  that  Mile,  de  Scudery's 
novels  are  unreadable  and  detestable;  but  it  is  not  so 
with  her  "Conversations."  It  is  well  to  know,  how- 
ever, that  the  "Conversations,"  certainly  the  first  of 
them,  are  taken  verbatim  from  Cyrus,  Clelie,  and  her 
other  novels. 

One  of  the  first  subjects  that  she  treats  of  is  con- 
versation itself : 

"  As  conversation  is  the  social  bond  of  all  men,  the  greatest  pleas- 
ure of  honourable  persons,  and  the  usual  means  of  introducing  not 
only  politeness  into  society,  but  also  the  purest  morality,  and  a  love 
of  fame  and  virtue,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  company  cannot  more 
agreeably  or  more  usefully  entertain  itself"  says  Cilenie,  one  of  her 
personages  "  than  by  examining  what  is  called  Conversation." 

Whereupon  they  begin  to  inquire  what  conversation 
should  be  in  order  to  be  agreeable  and  worthy  of  a 
company  of  well-bred  persons:  it  must  not,  they 
think,  be  too  limited  to  family  topics  and  servants, 
nor  turned  to  futile  subjects  and  to  dress,  which  so 


/IDa^emoiselle  De  ScuOer^»  73 

often  happens  when  women  are  by  themselves.  ' '  Are 
you  not  compelled  to  own,"  says  one  of  the  interlocu- 
tors, "  that  whoever  would  write  down  what  fifteen 
or  twenty  women  say  to  each  other  would  make  the 
worst  book  in  the  world?"  And  this,  even  when, 
among  the  fifteen  or  twenty,  many  were  intelligent. 
But  let  a  man  enter, — a  single  one  and  not  even  a  dis- 
tinguished man,  —  and  the  conversation  at  once  rises 
and  becomes,  all  of  a  sudden,  more  connected,  more 
witty,  more  agreeable.     In  short, 

"  the  most  charming  women  in  society,  when  they  are  together  in 
great  numbers,  without  men,  seldom  say  anything  that  is  worth  hear- 
ing, and  feel  more  bored  than  if  they  were  alone.  But  with  men  it 
is  not  so.  Their  conversation  is,  no  doubt,  less  lively  when  no  ladies 
are  present,  but,  as  a  usual  thing,  though  it  may  be  more  serious,  it 
is  also  more  reasonable;  they  can  do  without  us  better  than  we  can 
do  without  them." 

Those  are  shrewd  remarks,  which  show  experience 
of  the  world  and  almost  of  the  heart.  This  whole 
chapter  "On  Conversation"  is  very  well  thought 
out;  after  going  over  the  different  defects  of  conver- 
sation, Cilenie  or  Valerie,  or  rather  the  author,  in 
a  summary  that  has  no  other  drawback  than  being 
too  precise  and  methodical,  concludes  that  in  order 
not  to  be  wearisome,  but  to  be  both  charming  and 
reasonable,  conversation  ought  not  to  be  confined  to 
one  object  but  to  be  made  up  of  all: 

"  I  conceive,"  she  says,  "  that,  speaking  generally,  it  ought  to  con- 
sist more  frequently  of  ordinary  and  gallant  things  than  of  great 
things;  but  I  also  think  that  there  is  nothing  that  may  not  enter 


74  /IDa^emoiselle  ^e  Scu^er^♦ 

it;  that  it  ought  to  be  free  and  diversified  according  to  the  time,  place 
and  persons  about  us;  I  think  that  the  secret  is  to  speak  nobly  of  low 
things,  simply  of  high  things,  and  very  courteously  of  courteous  things, 
without  too  much  forwardness  and  without  affectation." 


But  what  was  still  more  necessary  to  render  it  charm- 
ing is  that  "there  be  a  spirit  of  politeness  that  shall 
banish  absolutely  all  sharp  and  bitter  jesting,  and  also 
all  those  things  that  may,  ever  so  little,  be  offensive  to 
modesty.  .  .  .  Also  I  desire  that  a  certain  spirit 
of  joy  may  reign  there."  AH  that  is  well  said,  and  as 
charming  as  it  is  judicious — as  one  of  the  personages 
of  the  Conversation  did  not  fail  to  remark. 

Read,  after  that  chapter,  the  one  that  treats  of  "The 
manner  of  writing  Letters  "  (partly  extracted  from 
Clelie),  and  you  will  understand  how  it  is  that  be- 
neath this  novel-writing  that  seems  to  us  so  extrava- 
gant, there  was  in  Mile,  de  Scudery  a  serious  Genlis,  a 
Miss  Edgeworth;  in  short,  shall  I  say  it.^  an  excellent 
schoolmistress  for  high  society  and  the  young  ladies  of 
rank  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

On  every  possible  social  subject  she  proceeds  thus: 
she  gives  a  complete  little  course,  too  complete  some- 
times, in  which  she  combines  the  historical  examples 
she  has  collected  with  the  anecdotes  she  gathers  in 
the  society  of  her  day.  She  analyses  all,  expatiates 
on  everything;  on  perfumes,  on  pleasures,  on  desires, 
on  qualities  and  virtues;  once,  she  even  makes  observ- 
ations as  a  natural  philosopher  on  the  colour  of  wings 
and  the    flight   of  butterflies.     She  conjectures,   she 


/!Da&emoiselIe  &e  5cu^ers.  75 

refines,  she  symbolises;  she  seeks  and  gives  reasons 
for  everything.  Never  was  so  much  use  made  of  the 
word  car  [for,  because].  There  are  days  when  she  is 
a  grammarian,  an  academician,  when  she  discourses 
on  synonyms,  and  carefully  elicits  the  meaning  of 
words;  in  what,  for  instance,  do  joy  and  enjoyment 
differ;  whether  magnificence  is  not  an  heroic  and 
royal  quality  rather  than  a  virtue ;  for  magnificence  is 
suitable  for  certain  persons  only,  whereas  virtues  are 
suitable  for  all;  how  magnanimity  includes  more 
things  Xh2in generosity,  which  usually  has  narrower  lim- 
its, so  much  so  that  we  may  at  times  be  very  generous 
without  being  truly  magnanimous.  Some  of  her  little 
Essays  are  charmingly  headed,  such  as  "Ennui  with- 
out cause."  In  some  of  these  "  Conversations"  Mile, 
de  Scudery  seems  to  us  a  Nicole  among  women;  with 
more  refinement,  perhaps,  but  with  a  background  of 
pedantry  and  stiffness,  which  that  ingenious  theolo- 
gian never  had.  And,  besides,  Nicole  sums  up  all  in 
God  and  by  thoughts  of  the  final  end;  whereas  Mile, 
de  Scudery  goes  no  farther  than  the  laudation  and 
apotheosis  of  the  king;  into  which  she  puts  an  adroit- 
ness and  special  ingenuity  that  Bayle  remarks  upon, 
and  which  is  slightly  displeasing. 

The  fact  is,  this  estimable  woman,  long  ill-used  by 
fortune,  had  early  accustomed  herself  to  pay  compli- 
ments which  were  useful  to  her;  a  little  wordly  wis- 
dom was  at  the  bottom  of  all  her  bad  taste.  More 
vapid  laudation  was  never  combined  with  a   mania 


76  /fDa&emolselle  ^e  Scu5erp» 

for  correcting  the  little  faults  of  the  society  around 
her.  But  what  of  that!  She  needed  to  sell  her  books 
and  to  place  them  under  illustrious  patronage.  Besides 
which,  to  describe  her  friends  and  acquaintances  at 
full  length,  their  town-houses  and  their  country- 
houses, — all  that  served,  while  flattering  their  vanity, 
to  fill  pages  and  swell  a  volume.  Sappho  was  not 
above  these  little  reasons  of  trade.  "  Upon  my  word," 
says  Tallemant,  "she  needs  to  set  all  stones  to  work; 
when  I  think  of  it  I  forgive  her."  Little  gifts,  emolu- 
ments, pensions,  she  liked  to  add  such  positive  proofs 
to  the  consideration  she  received,  which  never  failed 
her.  All  this  contributed  to  lower  the  moralist  in  her 
somewhat,  and  to  restrict  her  sight  to  the  narrow 
circle  of  the  society  of  her  day. 

At  certain  points,  however,  we  think  we  feel  a  firm 
and  almost  virile  mind,  which  approaches  lofty  sub- 
jects with  subtle  reasoning,  which  comprehends  their 
diverse  aspects,  and  which,  fiiithful  always  to  con- 
secrated opinions,  is,  above  all,  guided  by  considera- 
tions of  decorum. 

Mile,  de  Scudery  was  approaching  her  sixtieth  year 
when  Boileau  appeared,  and  began,  in  his  first  Satires 
(1665)  to  ridicule  the  great  romances,  and  relegate 
Cyrus  to  the  class  of  admirations  no  longer  permiss- 
ible to  any  but  country  gentlemen.  The  war  boldly 
declared  by  Boileau  against  a  false  style  which  had 
had  its  day,  and  existed  only  as  a  remaims  of  super- 
stition, gave  it  a  mortal  blow,  and  from  that  day  Mile. 


/roaC)emoi5eUe  &e  Scu&er^.  77 

de  Scudery  was  to  the  new  generation  a  superan- 
nuated writer.  Mme.  de  La  Fayette  reduced  iier  still 
further  to  the  rank  of  venerable  antiquities  by  publish- 
ing her  little  novels,  especially  that  of  the  Princesse 
de  Cleves,  in  which  she  showed  how  it  was  possible 
to  be  succinct,  natural,  and  delicate.  In  vain  might 
we  try  to-day  to  protest  against  the  irrefragable 
verdict,  and  to  enumerate  all  the  testimonials  of  con- 
solation given  to  Mile,  de  Scudery,  the  letters  of 
Mascaron,  Flechier,  Mme.  de  Brinon,  the  directress  of 
Saint-Cyr,  the  eulogies  of  Godeau,  of  Segrais,  of  Huet, 
Bonhours,  and  Pellisson.  The  latter,  who  distressed 
and  supplanted  Conrart,  became,  as  we  know,  the 
proclaimed  lover  of  Mile,  de  Scudery,  her  platonic 
adorer,  whom  he  celebrated  in  a  score  of  gallant 
verses  under  the  name  of  Sappho.  But  if  anything 
proves  to  me  that  Pellisson,  in  spite  of  his  elegance 
and  the  purity  of  his  diction,  was  never  a  true  classic 
and  for  ever  ignored  the  real  Graces,  it  is  precisely  his 
declared  taste  for  such  an  idol.  We  cannot  conclude 
anything  from  the  compliments  addressed  by  Mme. 
de  Sevigne  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon  to  Mile,  de 
Scudery,  then  an  old  woman;  those  women  of 
gracious  demeanour  and  high  breeding  continued 
to  respect  in  her,  when  they  spoke  to  her,  one  of 
the  admirations  of  their  youth.  As  for  the  other 
names  I  have  quoted  (I  except  none)  it  is  not,  the 
reader  will  kindly  remark,  by  good  taste  or  sound 
and  judicious   taste   that   they   shine;  they   have  all 


78  /iDa^emoiselle  &e  Scu^er^?. 

kept,  more  or  less,  a  marked  tinge  of  the  hotel  Ram- 
bouillet,  and  they  are,  in  some  respects,  behind  the 
age.  The  admiration  for  Mile,  de  Scudery  is  a  touch- 
stone which  tests  them  all  and  judges  them. 

The  French  Academy  awarded  for  the  first  time  in 
1 67 1  the  prize  for  Eloquence,  founded  by  Balzac. 
This  prize,  in  its  origin,  was  to  be  given  to  a  dis- 
course or  species  of  sermon  on  some  Christian  virtue. 
The  first  subject  designated  by  Balzac  was  "On 
Praise  and  Fame."  Mile,  de  Scudery  wrote  for  it 
and  obtained  the  prize,  to  the  great  applause  of  all 
that  were  left  of  the  veteran  academicians  of  the  days 
of  Richelieu.  The  Muse  who  thus  carried  off  at 
a  stroke  the  first  crown,  leading  the  procession  of 
future  laureates,  was  at  that  time  sixty-four  years 
of  age. 

She  continued  to  grow  old  and  to  survive  her  re- 
nown, being  literally  annihilated  in  the  outside  world, 
though  still  enjoying  fame  in  her  chamber  behind 
closed  doors.  Her  worth  and  her  estimable  qualities 
won  her,  to  the  last,  a  little  court  of  friends,  who 
spoke  of  her  as  ''the  first  unmarried  woman  of  the 
world"  and  "the  marvel  of  the  age  of  Louis-le- 
Grand."  When  she  died,  June  2,  1701,  the  Journal 
des  Savants  of  the  following  month  registered  these 
pompous  eulogies.  About  the  same  time,  in  the 
same  quarter  of  the  Marais,  lived  and  grew  old, 
though  nine  years  less  aged  than  herself,  a  woman 
who  was  truly  marvellous,  who  had  really  the  grace. 


/IDaOemoisellc  ^e  Scu^erg.  79 

the  easy  urbanity,  the  freshness  and  virility  of  mind, 
the  gift  of  rejuvenation  —  all,  in  short,  that  Mile,  de 
Scudery  had  not:  I  mean  Ninon  de  I'Enclos.  There 
is  a  lesson  in  taste  in  the  juxtaposition  of  those 
names. 

However  that  may  be.  Mile,  de  Scudery  deserves 
that  just  ideas  should  be  attached  to  hers.  Her  novels 
obtained  a  vogue  that  marks  a  precise  date  in  the 
history  of  manners  and  morals,  and  in  the  education 
of  society.  We  shall  always  remember  that  a  volume 
of  Cyrus  was  sent  to  the  Great  Conde,  when  a 
prisoner  at  Vincennes,  to  amuse  him;  and  to  M. 
d'Andilly,  hermit  of  Port-Royal,  a  volume  of  Clek'e, 
to  flatter  him  with  a  description  of  his  desert.  With 
her  false  apparatus  of  imagination  and  false  historical 
paraphernalia.  Mile,  de  Scudery  was,  after  all,  not 
more  absurd  than  Mme.  Cottin  a  few  years  ago. 
The  masquerading  attire  was  merely  borrowed :  what 
was  really  and  essentially  her  own  was  her  method 
of  observing  and  painting  the  society  about  her,  of 
seizing  on  the  fly  the  persons  of  her  acquaintance, 
and  putting  them,  all  alive,  into  her  books,  where 
she  makes  them  converse  with  wit  and  shrewdness. 
It  is  on  this  side  that  I  judge  her,  and  while  recog- 
nising much  distinction  and  ingenious  sagacity  of 
analysis,  much  moral  anatomy,  I  must  add  that  the 
whole  is  abstract,  subtile,  the  reasoning  overdone, 
with  too  much  of  the  thesis  about  it;  lacking  in 
buoyancy,  without  illumination,  dry  to  the  core,  and 


8o  /IDa&emotselle  &e  Scu&eri?. 

not  agreeable.  It  resembles  La  Motte  and  Fontenelle, 
but  with  much  less  ease  and  freedom  than  either  of 
them.  She  "distinguishes,"  she  divides,  she  sub- 
divides, she  classifies,  she  teaches.  Never  any  fresh- 
ness; the  delicacy  itself  soon  becomes  didactic  and 
far-fetched.  Even  in  her  little  summer-houses,  amid 
the  parks  and  gardens  she  describes,  she  is  careful  to 
put  an  inkstand.  Such  appears  to  me,  in  spite  of 
all  my  efforts  to  represent  her  to  myself  as  more 
agreeable,  the  geographer  of  the  Pays  de  Tendre, 
the  Sappho  of  Pellisson.  If,  therefore,  I  must  come  to 
some  conclusion  and  reply  to  the  question  with  which 
we  started,  I  am  compelled  to  attach  to  the  name  of 
Mile,  de  Scudery  an  idea,  not  of  ridicule,  rather  of 
esteem,  a  very  serious  esteem,  but  not  in  the  least 
an  idea  of  attractiveness  or  grace. 

A  spinster  of  such  great  worth  and  no  grace  is, 
nevertheless,  unsatisfactory  to  paint,  and  even  pain- 
ful to  point  out;  one  would  so  much  rather  put  in  all 
that  was  lacking  in  her! 

M.  Cousin  has  lately  attempted  to  make  a  complete 
revolution  in  honour  of  Mile,  de  Scudery,  and  in 
favour  of  her  Grand  Cyrus.  By  the  help  of  a  printed 
key,  known  to  exist  in  the  Bibliotheque  de  I'Arsenal, 
and  of  another  key,  in  manuscript,  in  the  Biblio- 
theque Mazarine,  he  has  endeavoured  to  give  to  the 
novel  a  serious  historical  value  in  relation  to  the 
actions  and  deeds  of  arms  of  the  Prince  de  Conde. 
The  Abbe  Lambert  in  his  Histoire  Litteraire  du  Regne 


/iDa^emoiselle  t>c  Scu^er^?.  si 

de  Louis  XIV,  speaking  of  the  immense  vogue  of 
Mile,  de  Scudery's  writings,  gives  the  following  ex- 
plantion  of  it: 

"  It  is  true  that  these  novels,  if  we  can  call  them  by  that  name, 
must  be  regarded  as  a  species  of  epic  poems  and  true  histories  under 
disguised  names.  Such  is  /irtamene  ou  Le  Grand  Cyrus,  in  which 
we  find  a  considerable  part  of  the  life  of  Louis  de  Bourbon,  Prince  de 
Conde  ;  while  Clelie  contains  a  quantity  of  traits  relating  to  all  the 
illustrious  personages  then  in  France." 

M.  Cousin  has  given  new  and  piquant  and  very 
precise  proofs  of  the  truth  of  this  statement  in  all  that 
concerns  Le  Grand  Cyrus,  but  he  goes  too  far  when 
he  attempts  to  make  a  military  authority  of  Mile. 
de  Scudery,  and  to  attribute  to  her  an  importance  she 
could  not  have  in  such  matters.  The  fact  is,  that  as 
soon  as  we  see  her  Persian  or  Scythian  personages 
unmasked,  and  their  true  names  given  by  the  help 
of  a  key,  as  M.  Cousin  has  done  with  ease,  but  as 
no  one  had  had  the  idea  or  the  patience  to  do  before 
him,  we  are  convinced  that  Mile,  de  Scudery,  to 
whom  all  was  fish  that  came  into  her  net,  had  re- 
ceived documents  from  the  hotel  de  Conde  which, 
under  a  slight  disguise,  she  introduced  bodily  into 
her  book:  the  battle  of  Rocroy,  that  of  Lens,  the 
siege  of  Dunkerque  under  the  name  of  the  siege  of 
Cumae,  are  described  with  all  their  particulars;  she 
printed  her  notes  and  extracts  as  she  made  them: 
this  flattered  the  Condes,  and  spared  her  the  trouble 
of  invention;  it  "made  copy"  for  the  printer,  a  con- 
sideration we  must  never  forget  in  speaking  of  Mile. 

VOL.  II. — 6. 


82  ^aDemoiselle  De  ScuDeri?. 

de  Scudery.  She  little  thought  she  would  some  day 
furnish  arguments  for  the  military  discussions  of 
future  Jominis,  and  become  herself  a  staff  authority! 
But  the  fact  remains  that,  through  her,  we  have  the 
version  of  the  Prince  de  Conde  and  his  friends  on  his 
great  deeds  of  arms,  some  points  of  which  have  been 
subjects  of  controversy.  She  is  the  faithful  echo  of 
the  hotel  de  Conde  in  such  matters,  just  as  she  was 
the  echo  of  the  hdtel  de  Rambouillet  in  matters  of  taste. 

Note  :  Sainte  Beuve  omits  to  do  justice  to  Mile,  de  Scudery  on  a  point 
that  gives  true  glory  to  her  name.  She  was  one  of  a  small  band  who 
did  a  work  for  which  France  and  the  world  can  never  be  too  grateful. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  France  had  no  standard 
of  national  language  ;  spoken  language  v/as  chiefly  a  variety  of 
dialects;  written  language  was  chiefly  a  learned  jargon.  Polite 
manners  and  personal  refinement  did  not  exist.  The  nobles,  who 
were  the  sole  arbiters  of  manners,  morals,  and  language,  were  soldiers 
trained  to  war  and  to  the  coarse  habits  of  a  camp.  Women  had 
little  influence  ;  there  was  no  such  thing  as  the  home  ;  the  only  places 
for  social  meeting  were  dark  bedrooms  so  ill-furnished  that  the  com- 
pany sat  on  the  floor,  or  vast  halls,  like  those  at  Blois,  where  half  a 
regiment  could  be  quartered. 

Such  was  the  state  of  society  when  a  woman,  quietly  and  without 
pretension,  opened  the  way  to  as  great  a  revolution  and  reform  as  his- 
tory can  show.  In  1608,  Mme.  de  Rambouillet  resigned  a  distin- 
guished place  at  Court  to  devote  herself  to  her  family,  to  study,  to  the 
cultivation  of  her  mind  by  intercourse  with  other  choice  minds  of  men 
and  women  whom  she  attracted  to  her  house  in  the  rue  Saint  Thomas 
du  Louvre.  Such  was  the  beginning  of  the  far-famed  hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet, where  the  art  of  conversation  was  born,  where  women  de- 
voted themselves  to  the  pleasures  of  the  intellect,  where  men  of 
learning  were  sought  and  honoured,  where  persons  of  intelligence  were 
received  on  equal  terms  without  regard  to  their  condition  in  life,  where 
great  lords  learned  to  respect  writers,  while  women  held  an  ascendency 
over  all  which  powerfully  contributed  to  refine  and  polish  both  writers 
and   warriors.     The  possibilities  of  the   French  language,  and  of  a 


/rDa&emo!selIe  Oc  Scu&er5.  83 

future  literature  were  the  chief  topics  of  conversation  but  not  the  only 
ones;  social  manners,  religion,  politics  were  also  discussed.  Among 
the  men  who  frequented  that  salon  we  find  the  Prince  de  Conde, 
Cardinal  Richelieu,  La  Rochefoucauld,  Corneille,  Bossuet;  among 
women,  Mme.  de  Longueville,  Mme.  de  La  Fayette,  Mme.  de  Sevigne, 
iVlUe.  de  Scude'ry,  who  may  be  called  the  historian  of  the  coterie,  for 
her  novels  are  really  a  portrait-gallery  of  all  these  choice  persons.  It 
is  true  that  her  books  are  unreadable  now  and  exasperating  to  literary 
taste;  but  we  should  remember  that  she  made  part  of  a  great  pioneer 
work,  in  which  all  the  actors  laid  stepping-stones  by  which  social  life, 
literature,  manners,  refinement,  the  status  of  women,  were  to  rise,  and 
rise  rapidly  to  higher  things.  With  this  before  our  minds  we  can 
overlook  the  Carte  du  Tendre  (Map  of  the  Country  of  Tenderness) — 
which,  by  the  way,  was  only  a  bit  of  private  nonsense  which  her 
friends  unwisely  persuaded  her  to  put  into  Clelie — and  turn  to  her 
solid  advice  to  women,  given  in  her  Grand  Cyrus: 

"  I  leave  you  to  judge  whether  1  am  wrong  in  wishing  that  women 
should  know  how  to  read,  and  read  with  application.  There  are 
some  women  of  great  natural  parts  who  never  read  anything;  and 
what  seems  to  me  the  strangest  thing  of  all  is  that  those  intelligent 
women  prefer  to  be  horribly  bored  when  alone,  rather  than  accustom 
themselves  to  read,  and  so  gather  company  in  their  minds  by  choosing 
such  books,  either  grave  or  gay,  as  suit  their  inclinations.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  reading  enlightens  the  mind  so  clearly  and  forms  the  judgment 
so  well  that  without  it  conversation  can  never  be  as  apt  or  as  thorough 
as  it  might  be.  ...  1  want  women  to  be  neither  learned  nor 
ignorant,  but  to  employ  a  little  better  the  advantages  that  nature  has 
given  them.  I  want  them  to  adorn  their  minds  as  well  as  their  per- 
sons. This  is  not  incompatible  with  their  lives;  there  are  many  agree- 
able forms  of  knowledge  which  women  may  acquire  thoroughly 
without  departing  from  the  modesty  of  their  sex,  provided  they  make 
good  use  of  them.  And  I  therefore  wish  with  all  my  heart  that  women's 
minds  were  less  idle  than  they  are,  and  that  I  myself  might  profit  by 
the  advice  1  give  to  others." 

These  words,  be  it  remembered,  were  written  by  a  woman  in  the 
dawn  of  "  culture." 

In  the  history  of  the  hotel  de  Rambouillet  the  reader  is  referred  to  M. 
Charles  Livet's  Precieux  et  Precieuses;  M.  Victor  Cousin's  La  Societe 
Franfaise  au  Xyil^  Steele;  also  to  M.  Auguste  Brachet's  Histoire  de 
la  Langue  Franfaise. — Tr. 


IV. 

nDoIlere* 


85 


IV. 

/IDoliere. 

IN  poesy,  in  literature,  there  is  a  class  of  men 
beyond  comparison,  even  among  the  very  first; 
not  numerous,  five  or  six  in  all,  perhaps,  since  the 
beginning,  whose  characteristic  is  universality,  eter- 
nal humanity,  intimately  mingled  with  the  painting  of 
manners  and  morals  and  the  passions  of  an  epoch. 
Facile  geniuses,  strong  and  fruitful,  their  principal 
trait  lies  in  this  mixture  of  fertility,  firmness,  and 
frankness;  it  is  knowledge  and  richness  at  the  found- 
ation; true  indifference  to  the  employment  of  means 
and  conventional  styles,  every  framework,  every 
point  of  departure  suiting  them  to  enter  upon  their 
subject;  it  is  active  production  multiplying  through 
obstacles,  the  plenitude  of  art,  obtained  frequently 
without  artifices  or  retarding  apparatus. 

In  the  Greek  past,  after  the  grand  figure  of  Homer, 
who  begins  this  class  so  gloriously  and  gives  us 
the  primitive  genius  of  the  noblest  portion  of  human- 
ity, we  are  puzzled  to  know  whom  to  take  next. 
Sophocles,  fruitful  as  he  seems  to  have  been,  human 
as  he  shows  himself  in  the  harmonious  expression  of 

87 


88  /IDoliere. 

sentiments  and  sorrows, — Sophocles  stands  so  perfect 
in  outline,  so  sacred,  if  I  may  use  the  word,  in  form 
and  attitude,  that  we  cannot  take  him  in  idea  from  his 
purely  Greek  pedestal.  Famous  comedians  are  lack- 
ing; we  have  only  the  name  of  Menander,  who  was 
perhaps  the  most  pleasant  in  that  class  of  genius;  for 
with  Aristophanes  a  marvellous  fancy,  so  Athenian, 
so  charming,  injures  his  universality.  In  Rome  I  see 
no  one  but  Plautus;  Plautus  ill-appreciated  still,  pro- 
found and  varied  painter,  director  of  a  troop  of  actors, 
actor  and  author  himself  like  Shakespeare  and  like 
Moliere,  whose  legitimate  ancestor  we  must  count 
him.  But  Latin  literature  was  too  directly  imported, 
too  artificial  from  the  first,  copied  as  it  was  from  the 
Greek,  to  admit  of  much  unfettered  genius.  The 
most  prolific  of  the  great  writers  of  that  literature  are 
also  "literary  men"  and  rhymers  in  soul — Ovid  and 
Cicero  for  instance.  Nevertheless,  it  has  the  honour 
of  having  produced  the  two  most  admirable  poets  of 
all  literatures  of  imitation,  study,  and  taste — those 
chastened  and  perfected  types,  Virgil  and  Horace. 

It  is  to  modern  times  and  the  Renaissance  that 
we  must  turn  for  the  men  whom  we  are  seeking. 
Shakespeare,  Cervantes,  Rabelais,  Moliere,  with  two 
or  three  later  of  unequal  rank,  and  that  is  all  ;  we  can 
characterise  them  by  their  resemblances.  These  men 
had  divers  and  thwarted  destinies;  they  suffered,  they 
struggled,  they  loved.  Soldiers,  physicians,  come- 
dians, captives,  they  found  it  hard  to  live;  poverty, 


MOLIERE. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


/IDoliere.  89 

passions,  impediments,  the  hindering  of  enterprises, 
— they  endured  all.  But  their  genius  rose  above  their 
shackles  and,  without  resenting  the  narrowness  of  the 
struggle,  kept  its  neck  from  the  collar  and  its  elbows 
free.  You  have  seen  true,  natural  beauty  force  itself 
to  the  light  amid  poverty,  unhealthy  air,  and  mean  life; 
you  have,  though  rarely,  perhaps,  encountered  young 
girls  of  the  poorer  classes  who  seem  to  you  formed 
and  illumined,  heaven  knows  how,  with  a  grand  per- 
fection of  body,  whose  very  finger-nails  are  elegant; 
such  beings  keep  the  idea  of  the  noble  human  race, 
the  image  of  the  gods,  from  perishing.  And  thus 
these  rare  geniuses,  of  grand  and  plastic  beauty, — 
beauty  inborn  and  genuine, — triumph  with  an  easy 
air  under  the  most  opposing  conditions;  they  develop, 
they  assert  themselves  invincibly.  They  do  not  de- 
velop merely  by  chance  and  at  the  mercy  of  cir- 
cumstances, like  such  secondary  geniuses  as  Ovid, 
Dryden,  or  the  Abbe  Prevost,  for  instance.  No:  their 
works,  as  prompt,  as  numerous  as  those  of  minds 
that  are  chiefly  facile,  are  also  entire,  strong,  cohering 
to  an  end  when  necessary,  perfected  again  and  again, 
and  sublime.  But  this  perfection  is  never  to  them  the 
solicitude,  sometimes  excessive,  the  constantly  chast- 
ened prudence  of  the  studious  and  polished  school  of 
poets,  the  Grays,  Popes,  and  Boileaus,  poets  whom  I 
admire  and  enjoy  as  much  as  any  one,  and  whose 
scrupulous  correctness  is,  1  know,  an  indispensable 
quality,  a  charm,  and  who  seem  to  have  taken  for 


90  flDoltere. 

their  motto,  Vauvenarque's  admirable  saying:  "Clear- 
ness is  the  varnish  of  masters."  In  the  very  perfec- 
tion of  the  superior  poets  there  is  something  freer, 
bolder,  more  irregularly  born,  incomparably  more 
fertile,  more  independent  of  ingenious  fetters;  some- 
thing that  goes  of  itself,  that  sports;  something  that 
amazes  and  disconcerts  the  distinguished  contem- 
porary poets  by  its  inventive  resources,  even  in  the 
lesser  details  of  their  profession.  It  was  thus  that 
Boileau,  among  his  many  natural  causes  for  surprise, 
cannot  refrain  from  asking  Moliere  where  he  "found 
rhymes." 

Rightly  understood,  these  excellent  spirits  hold  a 
middle  place  between  the  poesy  of  primitive  epochs 
and  that  of  the  civilised  and  cultivated  centuries;  be- 
tween the  Homeric  and  the  Alexandrine  periods. 
They  are  the  glorious,  still  mighty  representatives, 
the  distinct  and  individual  continuators  of  the  first 
epochs  in  the  bosom  of  the  second.  In  all  things 
there  comes  a  first  blossom,  a  first  and  full  harvest; 
these  happy  mortals  lay  their  hand  upon  it  and  fill  the 
earth,  once  for  all,  with  millions  of  germs;  after  them, 
around  them,  others  strive  and  watch  and  glean. 
These  teeming  geniuses,  no  longer  the  divine  old 
men,  the  blind  of  foble,  read,  compare,  imitate  like 
others  of  their  day,  but  are  not  thereby  prevented 
from  creating  as  in  the  dawning  ages.  Their  produc- 
tions are,  no  doubt,  unequal,  but  among  them  we 
find  masterpieces  of  the  combination  of  the  human 


/IDoUere,  91 

with  art:  they  know  art  by  this  time;  they  grasp  it 
in  its  maturity  and  to  its  full  extent,  but  without 
reasoning  upon  it  as  others  do  around  them;  they 
practise  it  night  and  day  with  an  admirable  absence 
of  consciousness  and  literary  fatuity.  Often  they  die 
(a  little  as  it  was  in  the  primitive  epochs)  before  their 
works  are  all  printed,  or  at  any  rate  collected  and 
made  lasting,  unlike  their  contemporaries  the  poets 
and  litterateurs  of  the  salons,  who  attend  to  such 
matters  early.  Such  is  their  negligence  and  theit 
prodigality.  They  abandon  themselves  completely,, 
especially  to  the  good  sense  of  the  people,  to  the  de- 
cisions of  the  multitude;  of  which,  however,  they 
know  the  chances  and  risk  as  well  as  any  of  the  poets 
who  scorn  the  common  people.  In  a  word,  these 
grand  individuals  seem  to  me  to  come  down  from  the 
very  genius  of  poetic  humanity,  and  to  be  tradition 
living  and  perpetuated — an  irrefutable  embodiment. 

Moliere  is  one  of  these  illustrious  witnesses.  Al- 
though he  chiefly  grasped  the  comic  side,  the  dis- 
cordances, vices,  deformities,  and  eccentricities  of 
mankind,  seldom  touching  the  pathetic  side,  and  then 
only  as  a  passing  accessory,  yet,  when  he  does  so, 
he  yields  to  none,  even  the  highest,  so  much  does  he 
excel  in  his  own  manner  and  in  every  direction  from 
freest  fancy  to  gravest  observation,  so  amply  does  he 
occupy  as  king  all  the  regions  of  social  life  that  he 
chooses  for  his  own. 

Moliere  belongs  to  the  age  in  which  he  lived  by  his 


92  /IDoliere. 

picturing  of  certain  peculiar  odditities  and  the  pre- 
sentation of  customs  and  manners,  but  he  is,  in  fact, 
of  all  ages;  he  is  the  man  of  human  nature.  To  ob- 
tain the  measure  of  his  genius  nothing  serves  better 
than  to  see  with  what  facility  he  fastens  to  his  century 
and  detaches  himself  from  it;  how  precisely  he  adapts 
himself  to  it  and  with  what  grandeur  he  can  issue 
from  it.  The  illustrious  men,  his  contemporaries, 
Boileau,  Racine,  Bossuet,  Pascal,  are  far  more  specially 
men  of  their  time,  of  Louis  XIV's  epoch,  than  Moliere. 
Their  genius  (I  speak  of  the  greatest  of  them)  bears 
the  hall-mark  of  the  moment  when  they  came,  which 
would,  probably,  have  been  quite  other  in  other  times. 
What  would  Bossuet  be  to-day  ?  What  would  Pascal 
write.?  Racine  and  Boileau  fitted  marvellously  the 
reign  of  Louis  XIV  in  all  its  youthful,  brilliant,  gal- 
lant, victorious,  sensible  parts.  Bossuet  dominated 
that  reign  at  its  apogee,  before  bigotry  set  in,  but 
during  a  period  already  loftily  religious.  Moliere, 
who  would,  I  think,  have  felt  oppressed  by  that  re- 
ligious authority,  growing  more  and  more  stringent, 
and  who  died  in  good  time  to  escape  it, — Moliere,  who 
belonged  like  Boileau  and  Racine  (though  much  older 
than  they)  to  the  first  period,  was  far  more  independ- 
ent of  it,  although  he  paints  it  more  to  the  life  than 
any  one.  He  adds  to  the  lustre  of  that  majestic  aspect 
of  the  great  century;  but  he  is  neither  stamped  by  it, 
nor  confined  to  it,  nor  narrowed  to  it;  he  proportions 
himself  to  it,  he  does  not  inclose  himself  within  it. 


/iDoliecc.  93 

The  sixteenth  century  had  been,  as  a  whole,  a  vast 
decomposition  of  the  old  religious,  Catholic,  and  feudal 
society;  the  advent  of  philosophy  into  minds,  and  of 
the  middle  classes  into  society.  But  this  incoming 
was  done  amid  disturbances,  disorders,  an  orgie  of 
intellects  and  the  fiercest  material  anarchy,  chiefly  in 
France  and  by  means  of  Rabelais  and  the  League. 
The  mission  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  to  repair 
this  disorder,  to  reorganise  society  and  religion;  from 
the  time  of  Henri  IV  it  thus  proclaimed  itself,  and  in 
its  highest  monarchical  expression  under  Louis  XIV 
its  mission  was  crowned,  and  with  pomp.  I  shall  not 
attempt  here  to  enumerate  all  the  stern  efforts  that 
were  made,  from  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  in  the  centres  of  religion,  by  communities, 
endowed  congregations,  by  reformed  abbeys,  and  in 
the  bosom  of  the  University  and  of  the  Sorbonne, 
to  rally  the  legions  of  Jesus  Christ  and  reconstitute 
doctrine.  In  literature  it  is  evident,  and  readily  ex- 
plained. 

To  the  Gallic,  jovial,  indecent,  irreverent  literature 
of  Marot,  Bonaventure,  Desperiers,  Rabelais,  Regnier, 
etc.,  to  the  pagan  literature,  Greek,  epicurean,  of 
Ronsard,  Baif,  Jodelle,  etc.,  philosophical  and  scepti- 
cal of  Montaigne  and  Charron,  succeeded  one  of  a 
very  different  and  opposite  character.  Malherbe,  man 
of  form,  of  style,  of  a  caustic,  even  cynical  mind  (like 
M.  de  Buffonin  the  intervals  of  his  noble  work), 
—  Malherbe,    a    freethinker    at    heart,    has    nothing 


^4  /IDoUere. 

Christian  about  his  Odes  except  their  exterior;  but 
the  genius  of  Corneille,  father  of  Polyeucte  and  Pauline, 
was  already  profoundly  Christian.  So  was  that  of 
d'Urfe.  Balzac,  vain  and  pompous  bel  esprit,  learned 
rhetorician  busy  with  words,  has  forms  and  ideas 
that  hold  firmly  to  orthodoxy.  The  school  of  Port- 
Royal  was  founded;  the  antagonist  of  doubt  and  of 
Montaigne,  Pascal,  appeared.  The  detestable  poetic 
school  of  Louis  Xlll — Boisrobert,  Menage,  Costar, 
Conrart,  d' Assoucy,  Saint- Armant,  etc.,  did  not  enter 
the  path  of  reform;  that  school  is  not  serious,  scarcely 
moral,  quite  Italian,  a  mere  insipid  repetition  of  the 
literature  of  the  Valois.  But  that  which  succeeds  and 
smothers  it  under  Louis  XIV  comes,  by  degrees,  to 
faith  and  the  observance  of  law  —  witness  Boileau, 
Racine,  Bossuet.  La  Fontaine  himself,  in  the  midst 
of  his  good-humoured  frailties  and  wholly  of  the  six- 
teenth century  as  he  was,  had  fits  of  religion  when  he 
wrote  the  Captivite  de  Saint-Male  and  the  epistle  to 
Mme.  de  La  Sabliere,  and  he  ended  by  repentance. 
In  a  word,  the  farther  we  advance  in  the  period 
called  that  of  Louis  XIV  the  more  we  find  literature, 
poesy,  the  pulpit,  the  stage,  taking  on  a  religious  and 
Christian  character;  the  more  they  evidence,  even  in 
the  general  sentiments  they  express,  a  return  to  be- 
lief in  revelation,  to  humanity  as  seen  /;/  and  ^  Jesus 
Christ.  This  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  and 
most  profound  features  of  that  immortal  literature. 
The  seventeenth  century  rose  en  masse  and  made  a 


/fDoll^re*  95 

dike  between  the  sixteenth  and  the  eighteenth  cen- 
turies, which  it  separates. 

But  Moliere, —  I  say  it  without  conveying  either 
praise  or  moral  blame,  and  simply  as  a  proof  of  the 
freedom  of  his  genius, — Moliere  does  not  come  within 
this  point  of  view.  Although  his  figure  and  his  work 
appear  and  stand  forth  more  than  all  others  in  this  ad- 
mirable frame  of  the  great  epoch  of  Louis  the  Great, 
he  stretches  and  reaches  forward,  backward,  with- 
out, and  beyond;  he  belongs  to  a  calmer  thought, 
more  vast,  more  unconcerned,  more  universal.  The 
pupil  of  Gassendi,  the  friend  of  Bernier,  of  Chapelle, 
and  of  Resnault  is  directly  connected  with  the  phi- 
losophy and  literature  of  the  sixteenth  century;  he  had 
no  antipathy  against  that  century  and  what  remained 
of  it:  he  entered  into  no  reaction,  religious  or  literary, 
as  did  Bossuet,  Racine,  Boileau,  and  three-fourths 
of  Louis  XlV's  century.  He  is  of  the  posterity  of 
Rabelais,  Montaigne,  Larivey,  Regnier,  of  the  authors 
of  the  Satyre  Menippee;  he  has,  or  would  have  had,  no 
difficulty  in  coming  to  an  understanding  with  La- 
mothe-le-Vayer,  Naude,  or  even  Gui  Patin,that  carping 
personage,  doctor  of  medicine  though  he  was. 

Moliere  is  naturally  of  the  society  of  Ninon,  of  Mme. 
de  Sabliere  before  her  conversion ;  he  welcomes  at 
Auteuil  Des  Barreax  and  a  number  of  young  seigneurs 
not  a  little  libertine. 

I  do  not,  by  any  means,  intend  to  say  that  Moliere, 
in  his  work  or  in  his  thought,  was  a  decided   free- 


96  /IDoliere. 

thinker;  that  he  had  any  system  on  such  subjects,  or 
that  (in  spite  of  his  translation  of  Lucretius,  his  free 
jesting,  and  his  various  liaisons)  he  did  not  have  a 
foundation  of  moderate,  sensible  religion,  such  as  ac- 
corded with  the  custom  of  the  times,  a  religion  which 
reappeared  at  his  last  hour,  and  had  already  burst 
forth  with  such  strength  from  Cleante's  lips  in  Tar- 
tuffe.  No;  Moliere  the  wise,  an  Ariste  of  calm  pro- 
priety, the  enemy  of  all  excesses  and  absurdities  of 
mind,  the  father  of  that  Philinte  whom  Lelius,  Eras- 
mus, and  Atticus  would  have  recognised,  had  nothing 
of  the  licentious  and  cynical  braggadocio  of  the  Saint- 
Amants,  Boisroberts,  and  their  kind.  He  was  sincere 
in  being  indignant  at  the  malicious  insinuations  which, 
from  the  date  of  the  Ecole  des  Femmes,  his  enemies 
cast  upon  his  religion. 

But  what  I  want  to  establish,  and  which  character- 
ises him  among  his  contemporaries  of  genius,  is  that 
he  habitually  saw  human  nature  in  itself,  in  its  uni- 
versality of  all  periods;  as  Boileau  and  La  Bruyere  saw 
and  painted  it  often,  1  know,  but  Moliere  without 
mixture  such  as  we  see  in  Boileau's  Epitre  sur 
r Amour  de  Dieu,  and  La  Bruyere's  discussion  on 
Quietism.  He  paints  humanity  as  if  it  had  no  growth ; 
and  this,  it  must  be  said,  was  the  more  possible  to 
him,  painting  it,  as  he  did  especially,  in  its  vices  and 
blemishes:  tragedy  evades  Christianity  less  easily. 
Moliere  separates  humanity  from  Jesus  Christ,  or  rather 
he  shows  us  the  one  to  its  depths  without  taking 


/IDoliere.  97 

much  account  of  the  other.  In  this  he  detaches  him- 
self from  his  century.  In  the  famous  scene  of  the 
Pauper  he  gives,  without  a  thought  of  harm,  a  speech 
to  Don  Juan  which  he  was  forced  to  suppress,  such 
storms  did  it  raise:  "You  spend  your  life  in  praying 
to  God  and  you  are  dying  of  hunger;  take  this  money ; 
1  give  it  you  from  love  of  humanity."  The  benefi- 
cence and  the  philanthropy  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
that  of  d'Alembert,  Diderot,  and  Holbach,  are  in  that 
saying.  And  it  was  Moliere  who  said  of  the  Pauper 
when  he  brought  back  the  gold  piece  that  other  say- 
ing, so  often  quoted,  so  little  understood,  it  seems  to 
me,  in  its  gravest  meaning, — a  saying  that  escaped 
from  a  habit  of  mind  essentially  philosophical:  "Where 
must  virtue  needs  go  niche  itself!  " — Ow  la  vertu  va- 
t-elle  se  nicher !  No  man  of  Port-Royal  or  its  con- 
geners (note  this  well)  would  have  had  such  a 
thought;  the  contrary  would  have  seemed  to  him 
more  natural,  the  poor  man  being,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Christian,  an  object  of  special  mercies  and  virtues.  It 
was  he,  too,  who,  talking  with  Chapelle  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  Gassendi,  their  common  master,  said, 
while  disputing  as  to  the  theory  of  atoms,  "Never 
mind  the  morality  of  it."  Moliere  belongs  simply,  as 
I  think,  to  the  religion,  I  do  not  say  of  his  Don  Juan 
or  of  Epicurus,  but  of  Chremes  in  Terence:  Homo 
sum.  We  may  apply  to  him  in  a  serious  sense  Tar- 
tuffe's  speech:  "A  man  ...  a  man,  in  short!" 
This  man  knew  frailties  and  was  not  surprised  by 

VOL.  II. 7. 


98  /IDoli^re. 

them;  he  practised  good  more  than  he  believed  in  it; 
he  reci^oned  upon  vices,  and  his  most  burning  indig- 
nation was  uttered  by  a  laugh.  He  considered  this 
sad  humanity  as  an  old  child  now  incurable,  to  be 
corrected  a  little,  but,  above  all,  to  be  soothed  by 
amusing  it. 

To-day,  when  we  judge  of  things  from  a  distance 
and  by  clear  results,  Moliere  seems  to  us  much  more 
radically  aggressive  against  the  society  of  his  time 
than  he  thought  he  was:  this  is  a  danger  we  should 
guard  against  in  judging  him.  Among  the  illustrious 
contemporaries  I  cited  just  now,  there  is  one,  only 
one,  the  one  whom  we  should  be  least  inclined  to 
connect  with  our  poet,  but  who,  nevertheless,  like 
him,  and  more  than  him,  brought  into  question  the 
principal  foundations  of  the  society  of  those  days,  and 
who  looked  in  the  face,  without  prejudices  of  any 
kind,  birth,  rank,  and  property.  Pascal  (for  he  is 
that  audacious  man)  made  use  of  the  ruin  he  pro- 
claimed of  all  things  about  him  solely  to  cling  with 
terror  to  the  pillar  of  the  temple,  to  clasp  more  con- 
vulsively the  Cross.  They  both,  Pascal  and  Moliere, 
seem  to  us  to-day  the  most  formidable  witnesses 
against  the  society  of  their  times.  Moliere,  in  a  vast 
space  reaching  to  the  edge  of  the  religious  inclosure, 
foraging  with  his  troop  every  corner  of  the  field  of 
the  old  society,  delivering,  pell-mell,  to  laughter  and 
ridicule,  titled  conceit,  conjugal  inequality,  captious 
hypocrisy,  often  alarming,  by  the  same  stroke,  right- 


/IDoliere.  99 

eous  subordination,  true  piety,  and  marriage:  Pascal, 
at  tile  very  iieart  of  ortliodoxy,  mai<.ing  thie  very 
archies  of  tlie  edifice  tremble,  after  liis  fashiion,  with 
tile  cries  of  anguish  that  he  utters,  and  putting  the 
strength  of  Samson  into  grasping  the  sacred  pillar. 
But  while  accepting  this  connection,  which  has,  I 
think,  both  novelty  and  accuracy,  we  must  not  as- 
cribe to  Moliere  more  intention  to  overthrow  than  to 
Pascal;  we  must  even  grant  him  less  calculation  of 
the  whole  bearing  of  the  matter.  Had  Plautus  a  sys- 
tematic reservation  in  his  mind  when  he  laughed  at 
usury,  prostitution,  slavery,  and  all  the  other  vices 
and  motives  of  ancient  society  ? 

The  moment  when  Moliere  came  upon  the  scene 
was  exactly  that  which  suited  the  liberty  that  he  had, 
and  that  which  he  gave  himself,  Louis  XIV,  still 
young,  supported  him  in  all  his  bold  and  free  en- 
deavours, and  protected  him  against  whoever  attacked 
him.  In  Tartuffe,  and  also  in  the  tirade  of  Don  Juan 
against  advancing  hypocrisy,  Moliere  foresaw  with  his 
divining  eye  the  sad  end  of  a  noble  reign,  and  he  has- 
tened, when  it  was  with  great  difficulty  possible  and 
when  it  seemed  to  be  useful,  to  denounce  with  pointed 
finger  the  growing  vice.  If  he  had  lived  till  1685,  till  the 
declared  reign  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  or  had  he  lived 
from  1673  to  1685,  during  that  glorious  period  of  the 
ascendancy  of  Bossuet,  he  would  no  doubt  have  been 
less  efficaciously  protected,  and  he  might  have  been 
persecuted   at  the  last.     We  ought  fully  to  com  pre- 


loo  /IDoUere. 

hend  —  through  understanding  that  universal,  free, 
natural,  philosophical  mind,  indifferent,  at  the  least, 
to  what  they  were  seeking  to  restore — the  anger  of 
the  religious  oracles  of  those  days  against  Moliere,  the 
cruel  severity  of  expression  with  which  Bossuet  scoffs 
and  triumphs  over  the  actor  dying  on  the  stage,  and 
even  the  indignation  of  the  wise  Bourdaloue  in  his 
pulpit  after  the  production  of  Tartuffe — Bourdaloue, 
friend  of  Boileau  that  he  was!  We  can  even  conceive 
the  naive  terror  of  the  Jansenist  Baillet,  who  in  his 
Jiigements  des  Savants  begins  his  article  on  Moliere 
with  these  words:  "  Monsieur  de  Moliere  is  one  of  the 
most  dangerous  enemies  to  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ 
that  this  century  or  the  world  has  produced,"  etc. 
It  is  true,  however,  that  some  of  the  clergy,  more 
liberal,  more  men  of  the  world,  were  less  severe  upon 
him.  Pere  Rapin  praised  him  at  great  length  in  his 
Reflexions  sur  la  Poetique,  and  cavilled  only  at  the 
carelessness  of  the  winding  up  of  his  plots.  Bonhours 
made  him  an  epitaph  in  French  verse  both  agreeable 
and  judicious. 

Moliere  was  so  thoroughly  man  in  the  freest  sense, 
that  he  obtained,  later,  the  anathemas  of  the  haughty 
and  so-called  reforming  philosophy  just  as  he  had  first 
won  those  of  the  ruling  episcopacy.  On  four  differ- 
ent counts — V Avare,  Le  Misanthrope,  Georges  Dan- 
din,  and  Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme — Jean  Jacques 
will  not  listen  to  wit,  and  spares  him  no  more  thaa 
Bossuet  did. 


/IDoIiere.  loi 

All  this  is  simply  to  say  that,  like  Shakespeare  and 
Cervantes,  like  three  or  four  superior  geniuses  through 
the  course  of  ages,  Moliere  is  a  painter  of  human 
nature  to  its  depths,  without  acceptance  or  concern 
about  worship,  fixed  dogma,  or  formal  interpretation; 
that  in  attacking  the  society  of  his  time  he  represented 
the  life  of  the  greater  number;  and  that  in  the  midst 
of  established  manners  and  morals,  which  he  chastised 
to  the  quick,  he  is  found  to  have  written  of  mankind. 

Jean-Baptiste  Poquelin  was  born  in  Paris,  January 
15,  1622,  not,  as  was  long  thought,  under  the  columns 
of  the  Market,  but  in  a  house  in  the  rue  Saint-Honore, 
at  the  corner  of  the  rue  des  Vieilles-Etuves.  He  be- 
longed, through  mother  and  father,  to  families  of 
upholsterers.  His  father,  who,  besides  his  trade,  held 
the  office  of  "valet-upholsterer  "  to  the  king,  intended 
that  his  son  should  succeed  him;  and  young  Poquelin, 
apprenticed  when  a  mere  child  in  the  shop,  knew 
nothing  at  fourteen  years  of  age  but  how  to  read, 
write,  and  cipher,  the  necessary  knowledge  for  his 
trade.  His  maternal  grandfather,  who  loved  the 
theatre,  took  him  sometimes  to  the  hotel  de  Bour- 
gogne,  where  Bellerose  played  high  comedy,  and 
Gautier  -  Garguille,  Gros-Guillaume,  and  Turlupin 
played  farce.  After  each  evening  at  the  theatre 
young  Poquelin  was  more  sad,  more  absent-minded 
at  his  work  in  the  shop,  more  disgusted  with  the 
prospect  of  his  trade.  We  can  imagine  what  those 
dreamy    mornings   following   a   play   were    for   the 


I02  /IDolferc. 

adolescent  genius  before  whom,  in  tiie  novelty  of 
apparition,  human  life  was  beginning  to  unroll  itself 
like  a  perpetual  stage  scene.  He  at  last  confided  in 
his  father,  and,  supported  by  his  grandfather  who 
"spoiled"  him,  he  obtained  permission  to  study. 
He  appears  to  have  been  boarded  out  and  to  have 
attended  as  a  day-scholar  the  college  of  Clermont, 
afterwards  that  of  Louis-le-Grand,  managed  by  Jesuits. 
Five  years  sufficed  him  to  complete  the  whole 
course  of  the  studies,  philosophy  included;  moreover, 
he  made  useful  acquaintances  in  the  school  who  had 
great  influence  on  his  future  fate.  The  Prince  de 
Conti,  brother  of  the  Great  Conde,  was  one  of  his 
schoolmates  and  remembered  him  ever  after.  That 
prince,  though  at  first,  and  as  long  as  he  remained 
under  the  direction  of  the  Jesuits,  ecclesiastically  in- 
clined, loved  the  theatre  and  endowed  it  magnifi- 
cently. When  converted  later  to  the  Jansenist  side, 
he  retracted  his  first  liking  to  the  point  of  writing 
against  the  theatre,  but  seems  to  have  transmitted  to 
his  illustrious  elder  brother  the  care  of  protecting  Mo- 
liere  to  the  last.  Chapelle  was  also  a  student  friend 
of  Poquelin  and  procured  him  the  acquaintance  and  the 
lessons  of  Gassendi,  his  tutor.  These  private  lessons 
by  Gassendi  were  likewise  shared  by  Bernier,  the 
future  traveller,  and  by  Hesnault,  known  for  his  invo- 
cation of  Venus;  they  must  have  influenced  Moliere's 
manner  of  viewing  things,  less  by  the  details  of  the 
instruction  than  by  the  spirit  that  emanated  from  it. 


/IDoIiere.  103 

which  all  the  young  hearers  shared.  It  is,  in  truth, 
remarkable  how  free  and  independent  of  spirit  were 
all  the  men  who  came  from  this  school  —  Chapelle, 
the  frank  speaker,  the  practical  and  lax  epicurean; 
Hesnault,  the  poet,  who  attacked  the  powerful  Col- 
bert and  delighted  in  translating  all  that  was  boldest 
in  the  choruses  of  Seneca's  tragedies;  Bernier,  who 
roamed  the  world  and  came  back  knowing  how,  un- 
der diverse  customs  and  costumes,  man  is  every- 
where the  same,  replying  to  Louis  XIV,  when  he 
asked  him  in  which  country  life  seemed  to  him  best, 
that  it  was  Switzerland,  and  deducing  on  all  points 
philosophic  conclusions  in  the  select  little  circle  of 
Mile,  de  L'Enclos  and  Mme.  de  La  Sabliere. 

It  is  also  to  be  remarked  how  those  four  or  five 
leading  minds  came  of  the  pure  bourgeoisie  and  of  the 
people:  Chapelle,  bastard  son  of  a  rich  magistrate; 
Bernier,  a  poor  boy,  associated  out  of  charity  in  the 
education  of  Chapelle;  Hesnault,  son  of  a  baker  in 
Paris;  Poquelin,  son  of  an  upholsterer;  and  Gassendi, 
their  master,  not  a  gentleman  (as  Descartes  stated), 
but  the  son  of  simple  villagers.  Moliere  took  the  idea 
of  translating  Lucretius  from  these  conferences  with 
Gassendi;  he  did  it  partly  in  verse  and  partly  in  prose, 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  topic;  but  the  manu- 
script is  lost.  Another  comrade  who  forced  himself 
into  these  lessons  of  philosophy  was  Cyrano  de  Ber- 
gerac,  suspected,  in  his  turn,  of  impiety  by  certain 
verses  on  Agrippina,  but  convicted,  above  all,  of  bad 


104  /TOoli^re. 

taste.  Moliere  took,  in  after  years,  two  scenes  from 
Cyrano's  P6dantjoue  which  certainly  did  not  disfigure 
Les  Fourberies  de  Scapin;  it  was  his  habit,  as  he  said 
on  this  occasion,  to  take  his  property  wherever  he 
found  it. 

On  leaving  school  Poquelin  had  to  take  the  office 
of  his  father,  then  too  old  for  service,  as  valet-uphol- 
sterer to  the  king.  For  his  novitiate,  he  followed 
Louis  XIII  on  the  journey  to  Narbonne,  in  1641,  and 
witnessed  on  his  return  the  execution  of  Cinq-Mars 
and  De  Thou;  bitter  and  bloody  sarcasm  on  human 
justice!  Instead  of  continuing  in  the  paternal  office 
during  the  years  that  followed  he  seems  to  have 
studied  law  at  Orleans,  where  he  was  admitted  to  the 
bar.  But  his  taste  for  the  theatre  drew  him  to  Paris, 
where,  having  haunted,  it  was  said,  the  harlequin 
booths  on  the  Pont  Neuf  and  followed  the  Italians  and 
their  Scaramouche,  he  put  himself  at  the  head  of  a 
group  of  young  actors  in  society,  which  became  be- 
fore long  a  regular  and  professional  troop. 

The  two  brothers  Bejart,  their  sister  Madeleine,  and 
Duparc,  called  Gros-Rene,  formed  part  of  this  strolling 
company  which  called  itself  "  The  Illustrious  Theatre." 
Our  poet  broke  away  at  this  time  from  his  family  and 
the  Poquelins,  and  took  the  name  of  Moliere.  He 
went  with  his  troop  through  all  the  different  quarters 
of  Paris  and  then  into  the  provinces.  It  is  said  that 
he  played  at  Bordeaux  a  TMha'ide,  an  attempt  at  seri- 
ous drama,  which  failed.     Farces,  Italian  plots,   and 


/IDoliere,  105 

impromptus  he  did  not  spare,  such  as  the  Medecin 
volant  and  the  Jalousie  du  Barbouille  —  the  original 
si^etches  of  the  Medecin  malgre  lui  and  Georges 
Dandin,  which  have  been  preserved.  He  travelled 
about  haphazard;  well  received  by  the  Due  d'Eper- 
non  at  Bordeaux,  by  the  Prince  de  Conti  wherever 
they  met,  hired  by  d'Assoucy,  whom  he  afterwards 
received  and  entertained  like  a  prince  himself;  hospit- 
able, liberal,  a  good  comrade,  in  love  often,  trying  all 
the  passions,  playing  on  every  stage,  leading  his  train 
of  youth  like  a  joyous  Fronde  through  the  land,  with 
a  fine  stock  in  his  mind  of  original  human  char- 
acters. It  was  in  the  course  of  this  wandering  life 
that,  in  1653  at  Lyons,  he  brought  out  L'Etourdi,  his 
first  regular  play.  He  was  then  thirty-one  years  old. 
Moliere,  as  we  see,  began  his  career  by  the  practice 
of  life  and  passions  before  painting  them.  But  it  must 
not  be  thought  that  his  inward  existence  had  two 
separate  and  successive  parts,  like  that  of  many  emi- 
nent moralists  and  satirists  —  a  first  part,  active  and 
more  or  less  ardent;  then,  the  fire  subsiding  from  ex- 
cesses or  from  age,  a  second  part  of  sour,  biting  ob- 
servation, disillusion,  in  short,  which  harks  back  to 
motives,  scrutinises,  and  mocks  them.  That  is  not 
at  all  the  case  with  Moliere,  or  with  any  of  the 
great  men  endowed,  to  his  degree,  with  the  genius 
that  creates.  Distinguished  men  who  go  through  this 
double  phase,  reaching  the  second  quickly,  acquire,  as 
they  advance,  only  a  shrewd,  sagacious,  critical  talent, 


io6  /iDoU^re. 

like  M.  de  La  Rochefoucauld,  for  example;  they  have 
no  animating  impulse  nor  power  of  creation.  Dra- 
matic genius,  that  of  Moliere  in  particular,  has  this 
that  is  singular  about  it:  its  method  of  proceeding  is 
wholly  different  and  more  complex.  In  the  midst  of 
the  passions  of  his  youth,  of  hot-headed,  credulous 
transports  like  those  of  the  mass  of  men,  Moliere  had, 
even  then,  in  a  high  degree,  the  gift  of  observing  and 
reproducing,  the  faculty  of  sounding  and  seizing  hid- 
den springs  which  he  knew  how  to  bring  into  play  to 
the  great  amusement  of  every  one;  and  later,  in  the 
midst  of  his  complete,  sad  knowledge  of  the  human 
heart  and  its  divers  motives,  from  the  height  of  his 
melancholy  as  a  contemplative  philosopher,  he  still 
preserved,  in  his  own  heart,  the  youth  of  active  im- 
pressions, the  faculty  of  passions,  of  love  and  its 
jealousies — a  sacred  heart  indeed !  Sublime  contra- 
diction, and  one  we  love  to  find  in  the  life  of  a  great 
poet;  an  indefinable  assemblage  which  corresponds 
with  what  is  most  mysterious  in  the  talent  of  dramatic 
comedy;  I  mean  the  painting  of  bitter  realities  by 
means  of  lively,  easy,  joyous  personages  who  all  have 
natural  characters;  the  deepest  probing  of  the  heart 
of  man  exhibiting  itself  in  active  and  original  beings, 
who  translate  it  to  the  eye  by  simply  being  them- 
selves ! 

It  is  related  that  during  his  stay  at  Lyons  Moliere, 
who  was  already  rather  tenderly  allied  with  Madeleine 
Bejart,  fell  in  love  with  Mile.  Duparc  (or  the  person 


/iDoli^re.  107 

who  became  so  by  marrying  the  comedian  Duparc) 
and  also  with  Mile,  de  Brie,  who  were  both  members 
of  another  troop  of  actors.  He  succeeded,  in  spite, 
it  is  said,  of  the  Bejart,  in  engaging  the  two  actresses 
for  his  own  troop,  and,  repulsed  by  the  haughty  Du- 
parc, he  found  consolations  in  Mile,  de  Brie,  to  which 
he  afterwards  returned  during  the  miseries  of  his  mar- 
ried life.  Some  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  find  in 
the  scene  between  Clitandre,  Armande,  and  Henriette, 
in  the  first  act  of  Les  Femmes  Savantes,  the  reminis- 
cence of  a  situation  anterior  by  twenty  years  to  the 
writing  of  the  comedy.  No  doubt  between  Moliere, 
much  inclined  to  love,  and  the  young  actresses  whom 
he  managed  ties  were  formed,  variable,  tangled,  often 
interrupted,  sometimes  resumed;  but  it  would  be 
rash,  I  think,  to  try  to  find  any  definite  trace  of  them 
in  his  works,  and  what  has  been  said  on  this  particu- 
lar point,  forgetting  the  twenty  years'  interval,  seems 
to  me  not  justified. 

The  Prince  de  Conti,  who  was  not  yet  Jansenist,  had 
made  Moliere  and  his  troop  of  the  Illustre  Theatre  act 
on  several  occasions  at  his  house  in  Paris.  Being  in 
Languedoc,  he  summoned  his  former  schoolmate,  who 
came  with  his  actors  from  Pezenas  to  Montpellier, 
where  the  prince  was.  There  he  made  use  of  his 
most  varied  repertory,  and  of  his  last  play,  L'Etoiirdi, 
to  which  he  added  the  charming  comedy  of  the  Depit 
amoureux.  The  prince,  enchanted,  wanted  to  en- 
gage him  as  his  secretary  in  place  of  the  poet  Sarazin, 


io8  /iDoUere. 

lately  dead.  Moliere  refused  out  of  attachment  to  his 
troop,  love  of  his  profession,  and  of  an  independent  life. 
After  several  more  years  of  strolling  in  the  South, 
where  we  find  him  bound  by  friendship  to  the  painter 
Mignard  at  Avignon,  he  came  nearer  to  the  capital 
and  settled  for  a  time  at  Rouen,  where  he  obtained 
permission  not,  as  some  have  conjectured,  through 
the  protection  of  the  Prince  de  Conti  (who  became 
a  penitent  under  the  Bishop  of  Alet  in  1665),  but 
through  that  of  Monsieur,  Due  d'Orleans,  to  act  in 
Paris  before  the  king.  This  event  took  place,  Octo- 
ber 24,  1658,  in  the  guard-room  of  the  old  Louvre,  in 
presence  of  the  Court  and  of  the  actors  of  the  hotel 
de  Bourgogne,  a  perilous  audience,  before  whom 
Moliere  and  his  troop  risked  representing  Nicom^de. 
That  tragi-comedy  over,  Moliere,  who  liked  to  speak 
as  orator  for  the  troop,  and  who  could  not  on  so  de- 
cisive an  occasion  yield  that  role  to  any  one,  advanced 
to  the  footlights  and  after 

"  thanking  his  Majesty  in  very  modest  terms  for  the  kindness  he  had 
shown  in  excusing  his  defects  and  those  of  his  troop,  who  had  trem- 
bled in  appearing  before  so  august  an  assembly,  he  said  that  his  desire 
to  have  the  honour  to  amuse  the  greatest  king  in  the  world  had  made 
them  forget  that  his  Majesty  had  in  his  service  most  excellent  originals 
of  which  they  themselves  were  feeble  copies;  but,  inasmuch  as  his 
Majesty  had  been  able  to  endure  their  country  manners,  he  entreated 
him  very  humbly  to  allow  him  to  give  one  of  those  little  farces  by 
which  he  had  acquired  a  certain  reputation  in  the  provinces." 

The  Docteur  amoureux  was  the  piece  he  selected. 
The   king,    pleased   with   the   performance,   allowed 


/IDoUere,  109 

Moliere's  troop  to  establish  itself  in  Paris  under  the 
name  of  the  "Troop  of  Monsieur,"  and  to  act  alter- 
nately with  the  Italian  comedians  on  the  stage  of  the 
Petit-Bourbon.  When  the  building  of  the  colonnade 
of  the  Louvre  was  begun,  in  1660,  on  the  site  of  the 
Petit-Bourbon,  the  Troop  of  Monsieur  removed  to  the 
Palais-Royal.  It  became  the  Troop  of  the  King  in 
1665;  later,  at  Moliere's  death,  it  was  united  first  with 
the  Troop  of  the  Marais,  then  with  that  of  the  hotel 
de  Bourgogne  and  became  the  Theatre  Fran^ais. 

After  the  installation  of  Moliere  and  his  company, 
L'Etourdi  and  the  D^pit  amoureux  were  given  for  the 
first  time  publicly  in  Paris,  succeeding  there  no  less 
than  in  the  provinces.  Though  the  first  of  those 
plays  is  only  a  comedy  of  intrigue  imitated  from  the 
Italian  imbroglios,  what  fire  already  in  it!  what  flam- 
ing petulance!  what  reckless  activity  thrilling  with 
imagination  in  Mascarille!  whom  the  stage  up  to  that 
time  had  never  known.  No  doubt  Mascarille,  such  as 
he  first  appears,  is  only  the  son  in  direct  line  of  the 
valets  of  Italian  farce  and  ancient  comedy,  one  of  the 
thousand  of  that  lineage  anterior  to  Figaro:  but  soon, 
in  the  Precieiises  Ridicules,  he  will  individualise  him- 
self, he  is  Mascarille  the  marquis,  a  wholly  modern 
valet  in  the  livery  of  Moliere  alone.  The  Depit  am- 
oureux, in  spite  of  the  unlikelihood  and  commonplace 
conventionality  of  its  disguises  and  recognitions,  pre- 
sents, in  the  scene  between  Lucile  and  Eraste,  a  situ- 
ation of  heart  eternally  young,  eternally  renewed  from 


no  /iDoli^re. 

the  dialogue  of  Horace  and  Lydia;  a  situation  that 
Moliere  himself  renews  in  Tartuffe  and  in  the  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme  with  success  always,  but  never  surpass- 
ing in  excellence  this  first  picture;  he  who  knew 
best  how  to  scourge  and  ridicule  shows  how  well  he 
knew  love. 

The  Precieuses  Ridicules,  acted  in  1659,  attacked 
modern  manners  to  the  quick.  In  it  Moliere  aban- 
doned Italian  plots  and  stage  traditions  to  see  things 
with  his  own  eyes,  to  speak  aloud  and  firmly,  accord- 
ing to  his  nature,  against  the  most  irritating  enemy  of 
all  great  dramatic  poets  at  their  outset  —  affected  and 
finical  pedantry,  the  shallow  taste  of  the  alcove,  which 
is  mere  distaste.  It  is  related  that  on  the  night  of  the 
first  representation  of  the  Precieuses,  an  old  man  in  the 
pit,  delighted  with  this  novel  frankness,  an  old  man 
who  had  doubtless  applauded  Corneille's  Menteur 
seventeen  years  earlier,  could  not  restrain  himself 
from  calling  out,  apostrophising  Moliere,  who  was 
playing  Mascarille:  "Courage!  courage,  Moliere!  that 
is  good  comedy!  "  At  this  cry,  which  he  divined  to 
be  that  of  the  true  public  and  of  fame,  at  the  universal 
and  sonorous  applause  that  followed,  Moliere  felt 
(Segrais  tells  us)  his  courage  swell,  and  he  uttered 
that  saying  of  noble  pride  that  marks  his  entrance 
upon  his  great  career:  "No  longer  need  I  study  Plau- 
tus  and  pluck  at  the  fragments  of  Menander;  I  have 
only  to  study  the  world." 

Yes,  Moliere,  the  world  is  opening  before  you ;  you 


/IDoliere.  m 

have  discovered  it,  and  it  is  yours;  henceforth  you 
have  only  to  choose  your  pictures.  If  you  imitate 
still,  it  will  be  that  you  choose  to  do  so,  that  you  take 
your  own  wheresoever  you  find  it;  you  will  do  it  as  a 
rival  who  fears  no  competitor,  as  a  king  to  enlarge 
your  empire.  All  that  you  borrow  becomes  for  ever 
embellished  and  honoured. 

After  the  rather  coarse,  but  honest,  spice  of  the  Cocu 
imaginaire,  and  the  pale  but  noble  essay  of  Don  Gar- 
de, Moliere  returned,  in  the  Ecole  des  Maris,  to  the 
broad  road  of  observation  and  truth  with  gaiety. 
Sganarelle,  whom  the  Cocu  imaginaire  showed  us 
for  the  first  time,  reappears  and  is  developed  in  the 
Ecole  des  Maris;  Sganarelle  succeeds  Mascarille  in 
Moliere's  favour.  Mascarille  was  still  young  and  a 
bachelor;  Sganarelle  is  essentially  a  married  man. 
Derived  probably  from  the  Italian  stage,  employed  by 
Moliere  in  the  farce  of  the  Medecin  volant,  introduced 
upon  the  regular  stage  in  a  role  that  has  a  little  of  the 
Scarron  about  it,  he  naturalises  himself  there  as  Mas- 
carille had  done.  The  Sganarelle  of  Moliere  in  all  his 
varied  aspects,  valet,  husband,  father  of  Lucinde, 
brother  of  Ariste,  tutor,  poetaster,  doctor,  is  a  person- 
age who  belongs  to  Moliere,  as  Panurge  to  Rabelais, 
FalstafF  to  Shakespeare,  Sancho  to  Cervantes;  he  is 
the  ugly  side  of  human  nature  embodied;  the  aged, 
crabbed  side,  morose,  selfish,  base,  timid,  by  turns 
pitiful  or  humbugging,  surly  or  absurd.  At  certain 
joyous  moments,  such  as  that  when  he  touches  the 


112  {f^olitvc, 

nurse's  bosom,  Sganarelle  reminds  us  of  the  rotund 
Gorgibus  who,  in  turn,  brings  back  the  goodman 
Chrysale,  that  other  jovial  character  with  a  paunch. 
But  Sganarelle,  puny  like  his  forefather,  Panurge,  has 
left  other  posterity  worthy  of  both  of  them,  among 
whom  it  is  proper  to  mention  Pangloss,  not  forgetting 
Victor  Hugo's  Gringore.  In  Moliere,  facing  Sgana- 
relle at  the  highest  point  of  the  stage,  stands  Alceste: 
Alceste,  in  other  words,  all  that  there  is  most  serious, 
most  noble,  loftiest  in  comedy;  the  point  where  ridi- 
cule comes  close  to  courage,  to  virtue.  One  line 
more,  and  the  comic  ceases;  we  reach  a  personage 
purely  generous,  almost  heroic  and  tragical.  Sgana- 
relle possesses  three-fourths  of  the  comic  ladder,  the 
lower  by  himself  alone,  the  middle  he  shares  with 
Gorgibus  and  Chrysale;  Alceste  holds  the  rest,  the 
highest — Sganarelle  and  Alceste;  in  them  is  all  of 
Moliere. 

Voltaire  says  that  if  Moliere  had  written  nothing 
but  the  Ecole  des  Maris  he  would  still  be  an  excellent 
writer  of  comedy.  Boileau  cannot  witness  the  Ecole 
des  Femmes  without  addressing  to  Moliere  (then  at- 
tacked on  all  sides)  certain  easy  stanzas  in  which  he 
extols  the  "charming  naivete  of  the  comedy,  which 
equals  those  of  Terence  supposed  to  be  written  by 
Scipio."  Those  two  amusing  masterpieces  were 
separated  in  their  production  by  the  light  but  skil- 
ful comedy-impromptu  called  Les  Fdcheux,  written, 
learned,  and  represented  in  fifteen  days  for  the  famous 


/IDoUere.  113 

fete  at  Vaux.  Never  did  the  free,  quick  talent  of 
Moliere  for  making  verse  show  more  plainly  than  in 
this  satirical  comedy,  especially  in  the  scenes  of  the 
piquet  and  the  hunt.  The  scene  of  the  hunt  was  not 
in  the  play  at  its  first  representation ;  but  Louis  XIV, 
pointing  with  his  finger  to  M.  de  Soyecourt,  a  great 
huntsman,  said  to  Moliere:  "There  is  an  original  you 
have  not  yet  copied."  The  next  day  the  scene  of  the 
huntsman  was  written  and  acted.  Boileau,  whose 
own  manner  of  writing  the  play  of  the  Fdcheux  pre- 
ceded and  surpassed,  thought  of  it,  no  doubt,  when  he 
asked  Moliere,  three  years  later,  where  he  "found  his 
rhymes."  The  truth  is,  Moliere  never  sought  them; 
he  did  not  habitually  make  his  second  line  before  the 
first,  nor  did  he  wait  half  a  day  or  more  to  find  in 
some  remote  corner  the  word  that  escaped  him.  His 
was  the  rapid  vein,  the  ready  wit  of  Regnier,  of 
d'Aubigne,  never  haggling  about  a  phrase  or  a  word 
even  at  the  risk  of  a  lame  line,  a  clumsy  turn,  or,  at 
worst,  an  hiatus — a  Due  de  Saint-Simon  in  poesy;  with 
a  method  of  expression  always  looking  forward, 
always  sure,  which  each  flow  of  thought  fills  out 
and  colours. 

During  the  fourteen  years  that  followed  his  installation 
in  Paris,  and  to  the  hour  of  his  death  in  1673,  Moliere 
never  ceased  to  produce.  For  the  king,  for  the  Court, 
and  for  fetes,  for  the  pleasure  of  the  public  at  large,  for 
the  interests  of  his  company,  for  his  own  fame,  and 
for  posterity,  Moliere  multiplied  himself,  as  it  were, 

VOL.  II. — 8. 


1 14  fIDolicce. 

and  suificed  for  all.  Nothing  hypercritical  in  him, 
nothing  of  the  author  in  his  study.  True  poet  of 
drama,  his  works  are  for  the  stage,  for  action;  he  does 
not  write  them,  so  to  speak,  he  plays  them.  His  life 
as  a  comedian  of  the  provinces  had  been  somewhat 
that  of  the  primitive  popular  poets,  the  ancient  rhap- 
sodists,  the  minstrels  and  pilgrims  of  Passion;  these 
went  about,  as  we  know,  repeating  one  another,  tak- 
ing the  plots  and  subjects  of  others,  adding  thereto  as 
occasion  demanded,  making  little  account  of  them- 
selves and  their  own  individual  work,  and  seldom 
keeping  "copy"  of  that  which  they  represented.  It 
was  thus  that  the  plots  and  improvisations  in  the 
Italian  manner  which  Moliere  multiplied  (we  have 
the  titles  of  a  dozen)  during  his  strolling  years  in  the 
provinces  were  lost,  with  the  exception  of  two,  the 
Medecin  volant  and  the  Barbouille.  L'Etourdi  and 
the  Depit  amour eux,  his  first  regular  plays,  were  not 
printed  until  ten  years  after  their  appearance  on  the 
stage  (1653-1663);  the  Precieuses  was  printed  during 
its  first  success,  but  in  spite  of  its  author,  as  the 
preface  indicates,  and  this  was  no  sham  pretence  of 
gentle  violence,  such  as  so  many  others  have  practised 
since.  Moliere's  embarrassment  in  going  reluctantly 
into  print  for  the  first  time  is  plainly  visible  in  that 
preface.  The  Cocu  imaginaire,  having  had  nearly 
fifty  representations,  was  not  to  be  printed,  when  an 
amateur  of  the  stage,  named  Neufvillenaine,  finding 
that  he  had  learned  the  play  by  heart,  wrote  it  down, 


/TOoUere.  us 

published  it,  and  dedicated  the  work  to  Moliere. 
That  M.  de  Neufvillenaine  knew  with  whom  he  had 
to  do.  Moliere's  carelessness  was  such  that  he  gave 
no  other  edition  of  the  play,  so  that  the  copyist  ad- 
mitted (what  would  have  been  plain  enough  without 
his  admission)  that  perhaps,  in  his  copy,  made  from 
memory,  a  quantity  of  misplaced  words  might  have 
slipped  in.  O  Racine!  O  Boileau!  what  would  you 
have  said  if  a  third  party  had  thus  presented  to  the 
public  your  cautious  work  in  which  every  word  has 
its  value  ?  In  this  we  can  see  the  inborn  difference 
there  is  between  Moliere  and  the  sober,  careful  race, 
rather  finical  but  with  reason,  of  the  Boileaus  and  La 
Bruyeres. 

To  guard  against  other  thefts  like  that  of  Neuf- 
villenaine, Moliere  was  forced  to  think  of  publishing 
his  plays  himself  in  the  height  of  their  success  on  the 
stage.  L'Ecole  des  Maris,  dedicated  to  his  protector, 
the  Due  d'Orleans,  is  the  first  work  he  published  of 
his  own  free  will;  from  that  moment  (1661)  he  came 
into  constant  communication  with  readers.  Never- 
theless, we  find  him  continually  distrustful  in  that 
direction;  he  feared  the  bookstalls  in  the  gallery  of  the 
Palais-Royal;  he  preferred  to  be  judged  "  under  the 
candles,"  on  the  stage,  by  the  decision  of  the  multi- 
tude. It  has  been  thought,  from  a  passage  in  the 
preface  to  the  Fdcheux,  that  he  intended  to  print  his 
remarks  and  almost  his  poetic  theories  with  each 
play ;  but  if  that  passage  is  better  understood,  it  will 


ii6  /FDoIiere, 

be  seen  that  his  promise,  wholly  out  of  keeping  with 
the  cast  of  his  genius,  is  not  serious,  but  rather  on  his 
part  a  jest  against  the  great  logicians  after  Horace  and 
Aristotle.  Besides  which,  his  poetic  theory,  as  actor 
and  author,  will  be  found  complete  in  the  Critique  de 
I'Ecole  des  Femmes  and  in  the  Impromptu  de  Ver- 
sailles, where  it  is  in  action.  In  scene  seventh  of 
the  Critique,  is  it  not  Moliere  himself  who  says  to  us 
through  the  lips  of  Dorante: 

"  You  are  pretty  people  with  your  rules,  by  which  you  hamper  igno- 
rant folk  and  bewilder  us  daily!  It  seems,  to  hear  you  talk,  as  if  the 
rules  of  art  were  the  greatest  mysteries  in  the  world;  and  yet  they  are 
only  certain  easy  observations  that  good  sense  has  made  on  what 
might  mar  the  pleasure  taken  in  this  kind  of  poem:  and  the  same 
good  sense  that  formerly  made  those  observations  can  make  them 
again  without  the  help  of  Horace  and  Aristotle.  .  .  .  Leave  us 
to  go  in  good  faith  to  the  things  that  take  us  by  the  soul,  and  don't 
seek  to  reason  us  out  of  finding  pleasure." 

To  finish  with  this  literary  negligence  which  I  have 
shown  in  Moliere,  and  which  contrasts  so  strongly 
with  his  ardent  prodigality  as  a  poet,  and  his  extreme 
care  as  actor  and  manager,  I  must  add  that  no  com- 
plete edition  of  his  works  appeared  during  his  lifetime. 
It  was  his  comrade  and  fellow-actor,  La  Grange,  who 
collected  and  published  the  whole  in  1682,  nine  years 
after  his  death. 

Moliere,  the  most  creative  and  the  most  inventive 
of  geniuses,  is  the  one,  perhaps,  who  has  imitated  the 
most,  and  on  all  sides;  this  is  still  another  trait  which 
he  has  in  common  with  the  primitive  popular  poets 


/iDoU^rc.  117 

and  the  illustrious  dramatists  who  followed  them. 
Boileau,  Racine,  Andre  Chenier,  poets  of  study  and 
taste,  imitate  also;  but  their  method  of  imitation  is 
much  more  ingenious,  circumspect,  and  disguised,  and 
it  chiefly  bears  on  details.  Moliere's  method  of  imitat- 
ing is  far  freer,  fuller,  and  at  the  mercy  of  his  mem- 
ory. His  enemies  attacked  him  for  stealing  half  his 
works  from  the  old  bookstalls.  He  lived,  during  his 
first  manner,  on  the  traditional  Italian  and  Gallic  farce; 
after  the  Precieuses  and  the  Ecole  des  Maris  he  became 
himself;  he  governed  and  overtopped  his  imitations, 
and,  without  lessening  them  much,  he  mingled  them 
with  a  fund  of  original  observation.  The  river  con- 
tinued to  float  wood  from  its  banks,  but  the  current 
was  wider  and  more  and  more  powerful.  What  we 
must  carefully  recognise  is  that  Moliere's  imitations 
are  from  all  sources  and  infinitely  varied;  they  have  a 
character  of  loyalty,  free  and  easy  as  they  are,  some- 
thing of  that  primitive  life  where  all  was  in  common; 
although  usually  they  are  well  worked-in,  descend- 
ing sometimes  to  pure  detail:  Plautus  and  Terence 
for  whole  tales,  Straparolo  and  Boccaccio  for  sub- 
ject matter,  Rabelais  and  Regnier  for  characters, 
Boisrobert,  Rotrou,  and  Cyrano  for  scenes,  Horace, 
Montaigne,  and  Balzac  for  simple  phrases — all  are 
there;  but  all  is  transformed,  nothing  is  the  same,  in 
a  word,  these  imitations  are  for  us  chiefly  the  fortunate 
summary  of  a  whole  race  of  minds,  a  whole  past  of 
comedy  in  a  new,  superior,  and  original  type,  as  a 


ii8  /TOoliere. 

child  beloved  of  heaven  who,  with  an  air  of  youth, 
expresses  all  his  forbears. 

Each  of  Moliere's  plays,  following  them  in  the  order 
of  their  appearance,  would  furnish  matter  for  a  long 
and  extended  history;  this  work  has  already  been 
done,  and  too  well  done  by  others  for  me  to  undertake 
it;  to  do  so  would  be  merely  copying  and  reproducing. 
Around  the  Ecole  des  Fenimes,  in  1662,  and  later 
around  Tartuffe  battles  were  fought  as  they  had  been 
round  "The  Cid"  and  were  to  be  around  Phedre;  those 
were  the  illustrious  days  for  dramatic  art.  The  Cri- 
tique de  I' Ecole  des  Femmes  and  the  Impromptu  de 
Versailles  sufficiently  explain  the  first  contest,  which 
was  chiefly  a  quarrel  of  taste  and  art,  though  religion 
slipped  in  apropos  of  the  rules  of  marriage  given  to 
Agnes.  The  Placets  au  Roi  and  the  preface  to  Tar- 
tuffe show  the  wholly  moral  and  philosophical  charac- 
ter of  the  second  struggle,  so  often  and  so  vehemently 
renewed  afterwards. 

But  what  I  wish  to  dwell  on  here  is  that,  attacked 
by  bigots,  envied  by  authors,  sought  by  nobles,  valet 
to  the  king,  and  his  indispensable  resource  in  all  his 
fetes,  Moliere,  troubled  by  passion  and  domestic  jars, 
consumed  with  marital  jealousy,  frequently  ill  with  his 
weak  lungs  and  his  cough,  director  of  a  company,  an 
indefatigable  actor  himself  while  living  on  a  diet  of 
milk, — Moliere,  I  say,  for  fifteen  years  was  equal  to  all 
demands;  at  each  arising  necessity  his  genius  was 
present  and  responding  to  it,  keeping,  moreover,  his 


/IDoliece.  119 

times  of  inward  inspiration  and  initiative.  Between 
the  duty  hurriedly  paid  at  Versailles  and  at  Chantilly, 
and  his  hearty  contributions  for  the  laughter  of  the 
bourgeoisie,  Moliere  found  time  for  thoughtful  works 
destined  to  become  immortal.  For  Louis  XIV,  his 
benefactor  and  supporter,  he  was  always  ready  ; 
L' Amour  me'decin  Wds 'wntten,  learned,  and  acted  in 
five  days;  the  Princesse  d' Elide  has  only  the  first  act 
in  verse,  the  rest  is  in  prose,  for,  as  a  witty  contem- 
porary of  Moliere  said,  "Comedy  had  time  to  fasten 
only  one  buskin,  but  she  appeared  when  the  clock 
struck,  though  the  other  buskin  was  not  laced."  In 
the  interests  of  his  company  he  was  sometimes  obliged 
to  hurry  work;  as  he  did  when  he  supplied  his  theatre 
with  a  Don  Juan,  because  the  actors  of  the  hotel  de 
Bourgogne,  and  also  those  of  Mademoiselle,  had  theirs, 
and  the  statue  that  walked  was  a  town  marvel.  But 
these  distractions  did  not  keep  him  from  thinking  of 
Boileau,  of  strict  pledges,  of  himself,  and  of  the  hu- 
man race,  in  the  Misanthrope,  in  Tartuffe,  in  the 
Femmes  Savantes.  The  year  of  the  Misanthrope  is, 
in  this  sense,  the  most  memorable  and  the  most  sig- 
nificant in  Moliere's  life. 

Boileau,  let  us  recognise  it,  although  we  may  blame 
his  reserves  in  his  Art  Poetique  and  his  innocent  and 
quite  permissible  surprise  at  Moliere's  rhymes, — Boi- 
leau was  sovereignly  equitable  in  all  that  concerned 
the  poet,  his  friend,  whom  he  called  the  Contemplator. 
He   understood  and  admired   him  in  the  parts  most 


120  /TOoUere. 

foreign  to  himself;  he  delighted  in  being  his  assistant 
in  the  Latin  macaronics  of  his  merriest  comedies;  he 
furnished  him  with  the  malicious  Greek  etymologies 
of  the  Amour  medecin ;  he  measured  in  its  entirety 
that  manifold  and  vast  faculty;  and  the  day  when 
Louis  XIV  asked  him  who  was  the  rarest  of  the  great 
writers  who  had  honoured  France  during  his  reign, 
the  rigorous  judge  replied  without  hesitation:  "  Mo- 
liere,  sire."  "1  did  not  suppose  it,"  said  Louis  XIV, 
"but  you  understand  the  matter  better  than  L" 

Moliere  has  been  lauded  in  so  many  ways,  as  painter 
of  manners  and  morals  and  human  life,  that  I  wish  to 
indicate  more  especially  a  side  which  has  been  brought 
too  little  into  light,  or,  1  may  say,  ignored.  Until  his 
death,  Moliere  was  continually  progressing  in  X\\q  poesy 
of  comedy.  That  he  progressed  in  moral  observation 
and  in  what  is  called  high  comedy — that  of  the  Misan- 
thrope, Tartuffe,  and  the  Femmes  Savantes — is  too 
evident  a  fact,  and  1  shall  not  dwell  upon  it;  but 
around  and  through  that  development,  where  reason 
grew  firmer  and  still  firmer,  and  observation  more 
and  more  mature,  we  ought  to  admire  the  influx, 
every  rising  and  bubbling,  of  the  comic  fancy,  very 
frolicsome,  very  rich,  very  inexhaustible,  which  1  dis- 
tinguish strongly  (though  the  boundaries  be  difficult 
to  define)  from  the  rather  broad  farce  and  the  Scar- 
ronesque  dregs  in  which  Moliere  dabbled  in  the  be- 
ginning. How  shall  I  express  it }  it  is  the  difference 
between  some  chorus  of  Aristophanes  and  certain  rash 


/IDoUere.  121 

outbreaks  of  Rabelais.  The  genius  of  ironical  and 
biting  gaiety  has  its  lyric  moments  also,  its  pure  mer- 
riment, its  sparkling  laugh,  redoubled,  almost  causeless 
in  its  prolonging,  aloof  from  reality,  like  a  frolic  flame 
that  flutters  and  flits  the  lighter  when  the  coarse  com- 
bustion ceases  —  a  laughter  of  the  gods,  supreme,  in- 
extinguishable. This  is  what  many  minds  of  fine 
taste,  Voltaire,  Vauvenargues,  and  others,  have  not  felt 
in  appreciating  what  are  called  Moliere's  latest  farces; 
and  Schlegel  should  have  felt  it  more.  He  who  mys- 
tically celebrated  the  poetic  final  fireworks  of  Calderon 
ought  not  to  have  been  blind  to  these  rockets  of  daz- 
zling gaiety,  these  auroras  at  an  opposite  pole  of  the 
dramatic  universe.  Monsiettr  de  Porceangnac,  the 
Bourgeois  GentUhomme,  the  Malade  imaginaire,  wit- 
ness in  the  highest  degree  to  this  sparkling,  electrifying 
gaiety  which,  in  its  way,  rivals  in  fancy  the  "Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream  "  and  the  "  Tempest."  Pour- 
ceaugnac,  M.  Jourdain,  Argant,  they  are  the  Sganarelle 
element  continued,  but  more  poetic,  freer  from  the 
farce  of  the  Barbouille,  often  lifted,  as  it  were,  above 
realism. 

Moliere,  compelled  by  Court  amusements  to  com- 
bine his  comedies  with  ballets,  learned  to  run  riot  and 
display  in  these  dances,  made  to  order,  his  droll  and 
petulant  choruses  of  lawyers,  tailors,  Turks,  apothe- 
caries; genius  makes  of  each  necessity  an  inspiration. 
This  issue  once  found,  Moliere's  inventive  imagination 
rushed  headlong  through  it.     The  comedy-ballets  of 


122  /iDoliere, 

which  I  speak  were  not  at  all  (we  should  be  careful 
not  to  think  it)  concessions  to  the  vulgar  public,  direct 
provocations  to  the  laughter  of  the  bourgeoisie,  al- 
though that  laugh  was  promoted  by  them;  they  were 
conceived  and  produced  for  the  Court  fetes.  But  Mo- 
liere  soon  took  delight  in  them;  he  even  made  ballets 
and  interludes  to  the  Malade  imaginaire  of  his  own 
free  will,  without  order  from  the  king  or  intention  to 
produce  the  play  at  Court.  He  flung  himself  into 
them,  the  great  man,  with  a  mixture  of  irony  and 
gaiety  of  heart,  in  the  midst  of  his  daily  sorrows,  as  if 
into  an  acrid  and  dizzy  intoxication.  He  died  in  the 
midst  of  it,  to  the  sharpest  sounds  of  that  gaiety  rising 
to  delirium.  I  find  in  Cizeron-Rival  the  following 
incident  which  illustrates  this  point: 

"  Two  months  before  Moliere  died,  M.  Despreaux  [Boileau]  went  to 
see  him  and  found  him  much  troubled  with  a  cough,  and  matcing 
efforts  with  his  lungs  that  seemed  to  threaten  approaching  death. 
Moliere,  rather  cold  naturally,  showed  more  friendship  than  usual  to 
M.  Despreaux.  This  encouraged  the  latter  to  say  :  '  My  poor  M. 
Moliere,  you  are  in  a  pitiable  state.  The  continual  application  of  your 
mind,  the  continual  straining  of  your  lungs  upon  the  stage,  ought  to 
make  you  resolve  to  give  up  acting.  Is  there  no  one  but  you  in  your 
troop  who  can  play  the  leading  parts  ?  Content  yourself  with  com- 
posing, and  leave  the  stage  work  to  some  of  your  comrades;  this  will 
do  you  more  honour  with  the  public,  who  will  regard  the  actors  as 
your  agents;  moreover,  your  actors,  who  are  not  any  too  tractable 
with  you,  will  feel  your  authority  more.'  '  Ah,  monsieur,'  replied 
Moliere,  *  it  is  a  matter  of  honour  with  me  not  to  quit  the  stage.'  '  A 
pretty  point  of  honour,'  said  the  satirist  to  himself,  '  which  consists  in 
blackening  his  face  to  make  a  moustache  for  Sganarelle  and  devoting 
his  back  to  the  bastinades!  Think  of  it!  this  man,  the  first  of  our 
day  for  wit  and  for  the  sentiments  of  true  philosophy,  this  skilful  cen- 


/IDoliere.  123 

sor  of  human  follies,  has  a  folly  more  extraordinary  than  those  he 
scoffs  at  daily!     That  shows  us  how  small  men  are.'" 

Boileau  did  not  advise  Moliere  to  abandon  his  com- 
rades nor  to  abdicate  the  management,  which  the 
leader  of  a  troop  of  actors  might  well  have  refused 
out  of  humanity,  and  for  many  other  reasons;  he  urged 
him  only  to  quit  the  boards;  it  was  the  obstinate  old 
comedian  in  Moliere  that  refused  to  do  so. 

Posterity  feels  otherwise;  far  from  blaming,  we  love 
these  weaknesses  and  contradictions  in  a  poet  of 
genius;  they  add  to  Moliere's  portrait  and  give  to  his 
personality  an  air  more  in  keeping  with  that  of  the 
mass  of  men.  Again  we  see  him  such,  and  one  of  us 
all,  in  the  passions  of  his  heart,  in  his  domestic  tribu- 
lations. The  comedian  Moliere  was  born  tender  and 
easily  moved  to  love,  just  as  the  tragedian  Racine  was 
born  caustic  and  inclined  to  epigram.  Without  going 
outside  of  Moliere's  works,  we  find  proofs  of  this 
sensibility  in  the  tendency  he  always  shows  toward 
the  noble  and  the  romantic.  Plautus  and  Rabelais, 
those  great  comic  writers,  show  also  (in  spite  of  their 
reputation)  traces  of  a  sensitive,  delicate  faculty  which 
surprise  us  joyfully  in  them,  but  especially  do  they 
delight  us  in  Moliere.  There  is  all  of  Terence  in 
him. 

About  the  time  when  he  was  so  gaily  painting 
Arnolphe  dictating  the  rules  and  regulations  of  mar- 
riage to  Agnes,  Moliere,  then  forty  years  old  (1662), 
married   the  young  Armande   Bejart,  younger    sister 


124  /IDoli^rc. 

of  Madeleine,  and  not  more  than  seventeen  years  old. 
In  spite  of  his  passion  for  her,  and  in  spite  of  his 
genius,  he  did  not  escape  the  misery  of  which  he  had 
given  so  many  sportive  descriptions.  Don  Gavere 
was  less  jealous  than  Moliere,  Georges  Dandin  and 
Sganarelle  less  deceived.  After  the  infidelity  of  his 
wife  became  apparent  to  him  his  domestic  life  was 
one  long  torture.  Warned  of  the  success  attributed 
to  the  Due  de  Lauzun  in  his  wife's  good  graces,  he 
came  to  an  explanation  with  her.  Mademoiselle 
Moliere  fooled  him  as  to  Lauzun,  by  avowing  an  in- 
clination for  the  Comte  de  Guiche,  and  got  herself  out 
of  the  crisis,  says  the  chronicle,  by  tears  and  a  fainting 
fit.  Bruised  and  wounded  by  his  misfortune,  Moliere 
returned  to  his  early  love  for  Mile,  de  Brie,  or  rather 
he  went  to  her  with  the  tale  of  his  sorrows,  as 
Alceste  is  driven  back  to  Eliante  by  the  treatment  of 
Celimene.  At  the  time  when  he  played  the  Misan- 
thrope, Moliere,  having  quarrelled  with  his  wife,  met 
her  only  on  the  stage,  and  it  is  difficult  to  suppose 
that  between  Armande,  who  played  Celimene,  and 
himself,  representing  Alceste,  some  allusion  to  their 
feelings  and  real  situation  did  not  occur.  Add,  by 
way  of  complicating  the  vexations  of  Moliere,  the 
presence  of  the  elderly  Bejart,  an  imperious  creature, 
it  appears,  with  little  compliance.  The  great  man 
made  his  way  among  these  three  women,  often  as 
much  harassed,  Chapelle  says  of  him,  as  Jupiter  at 
the  siege  of  Ilion  between  the  three  goddesses.     But  I 


/IDoliere.  125 

will  let  a  contemporary  of  the  poet  speak  on  the  chap- 
ter of  his  domestic  sorrows: 

"  It  was  not  without  doing  great  violence  to  himself  that  Moliere  re- 
solved to  live  with  his  wife  in  a  state  of  indifference.  His  reason  made 
him  regard  her  as  a  person  whose  conduct  rendered  her  unworthy  of  the 
affection  of  an  honest  man;  his  tenderness  made  him  dwell  on  the 
pain  he  should  feel  in  seeing  her  daily  without  making  use  of  the  privi- 
leges of  marriage.  He  was  reflecting  on  this  one  day  in  his  garden  at 
Auteuil,  when  a  friend  of  his,  Chapelle,  who  chanced  to  be  walking 
there,  came  up  to  him  and,  finding  him  more  troubled  than  usual, 
asked  him  several  times  the  reason.  Moliere,  who  felt  some  shame  at 
having  so  little  firmness  under  a  misfortune  that  was  much  in  vogue, 
resisted  as  long  as  he  could;  but  being  in  one  of  those  fulnesses  of 
heart  so  well  known  to  persons  who  love,  he  yielded  at  last  to  the  de- 
sire of  relieving  himself,  and  he  owned  in  good  faith  to  his  friend  that 
the  manner  in  which  he  was  forced  to  treat  his  wife  was  the  cause 
of  the  depression  in  which  he  found  him. 

"Chapelle,  who  thought  himself  above  all  such  things,  laughed 
because  a  man  like  him,  who  knew  so  well  how  to  paint  the  weak- 
nesses of  others,  fell  into  the  very  one  he  was  ridiculing  every  day ; 
and  he  showed  him  that  the  most  ridiculous  thing  of  all  was  to  love  a 
woman  who  did  not  respond  to  the  tenderness  felt  for  her.  '  As  for 
me,'  said  Chapelle,  '  1  own  to  you  that  if  I  were  so  unlucky  as  to  be 
in  such  a  position,  and  was  convinced  that  the  woman  1  loved  granted 
favours  to  others,  I  should  have  such  contempt  for  her  that  it  would 
infallibly  cure  me  of  my  passion.  Besides,  you  have  a  greater  satis- 
faction at  hand  than  you  would  have  if  she  were  your  mistress;  ven- 
geance, which  usually  succeeds  love  in  an  outraged  heart,  will  pay 
you  for  all  the  grief  your  wife  has  caused  you,  inasmuch  as  you  have 
only  to  lock  her  up;  that  will  be  a  sure  means  to  set  your  mind  at  rest.' 

"  Moliere,  who  had  listened  to  his  friend  with  some  tranquillity, 
here  interrupted  him,  and  asked  him  if  he  had  ever  been  in  love. 
'  Yes,'  answered  Chapelle,  '  !  have  been  in  love  as  a  man  of  good 
sense  should  be;  but  I  never  should  make  a  great  trouble  out  of  a 
thing  my  honour  required  me  to  do;  and  I  blush  for  you  to  find  you 
so  vacillating.' — '  I  see  plainly  that  you  have  never  loved,'  said  Moliere, 
'  you  have  taken  the  name  of  love  for  love  itself.  I  will  not  detail  to 
you  an  infinity  of  examples  that  would  make  you  see  the  power  of 
that  passion ;  I  will  merely  give  you  a  faithful  account  of  my  trouble. 


126  /IDoUere. 

to  make  you  understand  how  little  a  man  is  master  of  himself  when 
love  has  obtained  a  certain  ascendancy  over  him.  To  answer  you  as 
to  the  perfect  knowledge  that  you  say  1  have  of  the  heart  of  man,  and 
the  portraits  that  1  make  of  it  daily,  1  grant  that  1  have  studied  myself 
as  far  as  I  could  to  learn  its  weakness;  but  if  my  knowledge  teaches 
me  that  peril  should  be  shunned,  my  experience  shows  me  only  too 
plainly  that  it  is  impossible  to  escape  it;  1  judge  daily  by  myself.  I 
was  born  with  the  utmost  disposition  to  tenderness,  and  as  I  thought 
that  my  efforts  would  inspire  my  wife,  through  habit,  with  feelings 
that  time  could  not  destroy,  I  neglected  nothing  to  succeed  in  doing 
so.  As  she  was  very  young  when  I  married  her,  1  did  not  perceive 
her  evil  inclinations,  and  1  thought  myself  less  unfortunate  than  others 
who  make  such  marriages.  Marriage  did  not  lessen  my  eager  atten- 
tions to  her;  but  I  soon  found  such  indifference  that  I  began  to  see 
that  all  my  precautions  were  useless,  and  that  what  she  felt  for  me  was 
very  far  from  what  I  had  desired  in  order  to  be  happy.  I  blamed  my- 
self for  a  sensitiveness  which  seemed  to  me  ridiculous  in  a  husband, 
and  !  attributed  to  her  temper  what  was  really  the  effect  of  her  want 
of  affection  for  me.  But  1  soon  had  too  much  reason  to  perceive  my 
error,  and  the  passion  which  she  had,  shortly  after,  for  the  Comte  de 
Guiche  made  too  much  noise  in  the  world  to  leave  me  in  my  apparent 
tranquillity.  Finding  it  impossible  to  change  her  feelings,  I  spared 
nothing,  from  the  first,  to  conquer  myself  For  that  I  employed  all 
the  strength  of  my  mind;  I  summoned  to  my  help  all  that  could  con- 
tribute to  my  consolation.  I  considered  her  as  a  person  whose  whole 
merit  had  been  in  her  innocence,  and  who,  for  that  reason,  had  none 
after  her  infidelity.  1  then  took  the  resolution  to  live  with  her  as  an 
honourable  man  who,  having  a  light-minded  wife,  is  convinced  that, 
no  matter  what  may  be  said,  his  reputation  does  not  depend  upon  her 
bad  conduct.  But  I  have  had  the  grief  to  find  that  a  young  woman 
without  beauty,  who  owes  the  little  intelligence  men  find  in  her  to 
the  education  that  I  gave  her,  has  been  able  in  a  moment  to  destroy 
my  philosophy.  Her  presence  makes  me  forget  all  my  resolutions, 
and  the  first  words  she  says  to  me  in  her  defence  leave  me  so  con- 
vinced that  my  suspicions  are  ill-founded,  that  I  beg  her  pardon  for 
having  been  so  credulous.  And  yet,  all  my  kindness  does  not  change 
her.  I  have  therefore  determined  to  live  with  her  as  if  she  were  not 
my  wife;  but  if  you  knew  what  I  suffer  you  would  pity  me.  My 
passion  has  reached  such  a  point  that  it  even  enters  with  compassion 
into  all  her  interests.      When  I  consider  how  impossible  it  is  for  me  to 


/IDoUere.  127 

conquer  what  I  feel  for  her,  I  tell  myself  that  she  may  have  the  same 
difficulty  in  conquering  her  inclination  to  be  coquettish,  and  I  find 
myself  more  disposed  to  pity  her  than  to  blame  her.  You  will  tell 
me,  no  doubt,  that  a  man  must  be  a  poet  to  feel  this;  but,  for  my 
part,  I  think  there  is  but  one  kind  of  love,  and  that  those  who  have 
not  felt  these  delicacies  of  sentiment  have  never  truly  loved.  All 
things  in  the  world  are  connected  with  her  in  my  heart.  My  idea 
is  so  fully  occupied  with  her  that,  in  her  absence,  nothing  can 
divert  it  from  her.  When  I  see  her,  an  emotion,  transports  that  may 
be  felt  but  not  described,  take  from  me  all  power  of  reflection;  I 
have  no  longer  any  eyes  for  her  defects;  I  can  see  only  all  she  has  that 
is  lovable.  Is  not  that  the  last  degree  of  madness?  and  do  you  not 
wonder  that  what  1  have  of  reason  serves  only  to  make  me  know  my 
weakness  without  enabling  me  to  triumph  over  it  ? ' — '  I  confess  to 
you,'  replied  his  friend,  '  that  you  are  more  to  be  pitied  than  1  thought; 
but  we  must  hope  for  better  things  in  time.  Continue  to  make 
efforts;  they  will  take  effect  when  you  least  think  it;  as  for  me,  I  will 
offer  ardent  prayers  that  you  may  soon  obtain  contentment.'  He 
withdrew,  leaving  Moliere  to  muse  still  longer  on  the  means  to  allay 
his  grief." 

This  touching  scene  took  place  at  Auteuil,  in  that 
garden  more  celebrated  for  another  affair  which  the 
literary  imagination  has  endlessly  embroidered,  the 
gaiety  of  which  is  more  in  keeping  with  the  usual 
ideas  evoked  by  Moliere's  name.  I  mean  the  famous 
supper  at  which,  while  the  amphytrion  was  ill  in  his 
bed,  Chapelle  did  the  honours  of  the  feast  and  the 
cellar  so  well  that  all  the  guests,  Boileau  at  their 
head,  were  rushing  to  drown  themselves  in  the  Seine 
in  pure  gaiety  of  heart,  when  Moliere,  brought  down 
by  the  noise,  persuaded  them  to  put  off  the  immolation 
till  the  morrow  and  perform  it  under  a  glowing  sky. 
Observe  that  this  joyous  tale  obtained  its  vogue  only 
because  the  popular  name  of  the  great  comedian  was 


128  /iDoli^re. 

mingled  in  it.  The  literary  name  of  Boileau  would 
not  have  sufficed  to  make  it  national  property  in  this 
way;  such  anecdotes  would  never  be  told  about 
Racine.  Legends  of  this  kind  obtain  currency  only 
when  connected  with  truly  popular  poets. 

Though  Moliere  did  not,  after  the  fashion  of  several 
great  poets,  leave  sonnets  on  his  personal  feelings,  his 
loves,  his  sorrows,  the  question  arises,  did  he  in- 
directly convey  something  of  them  into  his  comedies.-^ 
and  if  he  did,  to  what  extent?  We  find  in  his  Life, 
by  M.  Taschereau,  several  ingenious  connections 
made  between  his  domestic  circumstances  and  parts 
of  his  plays  with  which  they  correspond. 

"  Moliere,"  says  La  Grange,  his  comrade  and  the  first  editor  of  his 
complete  works, — "Moliere  made  admirable  applications  in  his  come- 
dies, in  which,  we  may  say,  he  made  game  of  every  one,  inasmuch  as 
in  various  places  he  jested  about  himself  and  his  family  affairs,  and 
what  happened  in  his  own  home;  this  was  often  noticed  by  his  in- 
timate friends." 

Thus  in  the  third  act  of  the  Bourgeois  Geiitilhomme 
he  has  given  a  speaking  likeness  of  his  wife;  in  the 
first  scene  of  the  Impromptu  de  (Versailles  he  puts  a 
piquant  reference  to  the  date  of  his  marriage;  and  in 
the  fifth  scene  of  the  second  act  of  the  Avare  he 
laughs  at  himself  for  his  cough  and  his  catarrh.  It  is 
very  probable,  also,  that  in  Arnolphe,  in  Alceste,  he 
thought  of  his  age,  his  situation,  his  jealousy;  and 
that  under  the  mask  of  Argan  he  gave  vent  to  his 
antipathy  to  the  Faculty. 


/IDoltere.  129 

But  an  essential  distinction  must  be  made  here,  and 
we  cannot  reflect  upon  it  too  much  because  it  reaches 
to  the  very  bottom  of  dramatic  genius.  The  traits 
above-mentioned  bear  only  on  rather  vague  and  gen- 
eral conformities,  or  very  simple  details;  in  reality, 
none  of  Moliere's  personages  are  himself.  The 
greater  part  of  those  very  traits  should  be  taken  only 
as  the  tricks  and  little  by-plays  of  an  excellent  actor, 
customary  with  comedians  of  all  epochs  and  which 
incite  to  laughter.  No  less  may  be  said  of  the  so- 
called  copies  which  Moliere  is  said  to  have  made 
of  certain  originals.  Alceste  is  said  to  be  the  portrait 
of  M.  de  Montausier,  the  Bourgeois  that  of  Rohault; 
the  Avare  that  of  President  de  Bercy,  and  so  on: 
here  it  is  the  Comte  de  Grammont,  there  the  Due  de 
La  Feuillade  who  takes  the  honours  of  the  play. 
Dangeau,  Tallemant,  Gui  Patin,  Cizeron-Rival,  all 
those  amateurs  of  ana,  plunge  into  discourse  with  in- 
genuous zeal,  and  keep  us  informed  of  their  anecdoti- 
cal  discoveries.  It  is  all  futile:  Alceste  is  no  more  M. 
de  Montausier  than  he  is  Moliere,  than  he  is  Boileau, 
of  whom  he  reproduces  certain  features.  Even  the 
huntsman  of  the  Fdchsux  is  not  M,  de  Soyecourt 
solely,  and  Trissotin  is  the  Abbe  Cotin  only  for  a  mo- 
ment in  his  verse.  Moliere's  personages,  in  a  word, 
are  not  copies  but  creations.  He  invents,  he  engen- 
ders them;  they  may  have  an  air,  here  or  there,  of 
resemblance  to  such  or  such  an  individual,  but  they 
are,  as  a  total,  themselves  only.     To  view  them  other- 


I30  ^oli^re. 

wise  is  to  ignore  what  is  multiform  and  complex  in 
that  mysterious  dramatic  physiology  of  which  the 
author  alone  has  the  secret;  he  alone  knows  the  point 
to  which  the  copy  goes  and  where  creation  begins; 
he  alone  can  distinguish  the  sinuous  line,  the  knitting 
together, — more  learnedly,  more  divinely  accom- 
plished than  that  of  the  shoulder  of  Pelops. 

In  that  order  of  minds  which  includes,  through 
divers  ages  and  in  divers  ranks,  Cervantes,  Rabelais, 
Le  Sage,  Fielding,  Beaumarchais,  and  Walter  Scott, 
Moliere  is,  with  Shakespeare,  the  most  complete  ex- 
ample of  the  dramatic  and,  properly  so-called,  creative 
faculty.  Shakespeare  has,  above  Moliere,  pathetic 
touches  and  flashes  of  the  terrible — Macbeth,  King 
Lear,  Ophelia — but  Moliere  redeems  in  some  respects 
this  loss  by  the  number,  the  perfection,  the  continual 
and  profound  weaving  together  of  his  principal  char- 
acters. In  all  these  great  men  evidently,  but  in 
Moliere  more  evidently  still,  the  dramatic  genius  is  not 
an  outside  extension,  expansion  of  a  lyrical  and  per- 
sonal faculty,  which,  starting  from  its  own  interior 
sentiments,  toils  to  transport  them  outwardly  and 
make  them  live,  as  much  as  possible,  under  other 
masks  (Byron  in  his  tragedies,  for  instance) ;  nor  is  it 
the  pure  and  simple  application  of  a  faculty  of  critical, 
analytical  observation,  which  carefully  exhibits  in  the 
personages  of  its  composition  the  scattered  traits  it  has 
collected.  There  is  a  whole  class  of  true  dramatists 
who   have   something   lyrical,   in   one   sense   almost 


/IDoUere.  131 

blind,  in  their  inspiration ;  a  warmth,  a  glow,  born  of 
an  inward  vivid  sentiment,  which  they  impart  directly 
to  their  personages.  Moliere  said  of  Corneille:  "He 
has  an  elf  that  comes  from  time  to  time  and  whispers 
excellent  verses  in  his  ear;  then  it  leaves  him,  saying: 
'  Let  us  see  how  he  will  get  on  without  me ' :  he  does 
nothing  good  and  the  elf  makes  merry  at  him." 

In  truth,  Corneille,  Crebillon,  Schiller,  Ducis,  old 
Marlowe,  were  each  and  all  subject  to  elves,  to  sudden, 
direct  emotions,  in  the  crises  of  their  dramatic  impulse. 
They  did  not  govern  their  genius  with  the  fulness  and 
consistency  of  human  freedom.  Often  sublime  and 
magnificent,  they  obeyed  some  mysterious  cry  of  in- 
stinct, or  some  noble  warmth  of  blood,  like  generous 
animals,  lions  or  bulls;  they  knew  not  fully  what  they 
did.  Moliere,  like  Shakespeare,  does  know;  like  that 
great  forerunner,  he  moves  in  a  sphere  more  freely 
broad,  and  thus  superior;  he  governs  himself,  he  rules 
his  fire,  ardent  in  his  work  but  lucid  in  his  ardour. 

This  lucidity,  nevertheless,  his  habitual  coldness  of 
nature  in  the  midst  of  so  stirring  a  work,  do  not 
aspire  to  the  predetermined,  icy  impartiality,  such 
as  we  have  seen  in  Goethe,  that  Talleyrand  of  art — 
such  critical  subtleties  in  the  bosom  of  poesy  were 
not  as  yet  invented.  Moliere  and  Shakespeare  are 
two  brothers  of  the  primitive  race;  with  this  differ- 
ence, as  I  conceive,  that  in  common  life  Shakespeare, 
poet  of  tears  and  terror,  would  readily  develop  a  more 
smiling  and  happier  nature,  while  Moliere,  the  joyous 


132  /IDoIiere. 

comedian,  would   yield   himself  more  and   more  to 
melancholy  and  silence. 

Mile.  Poisson,  wife  of  the  comedian  of  that  name, 
has  left  the  following  portrait  of  Moliere,  which  those 
painted  by  Mignard  do  not  contradict  as  to  physical 
traits,  and  which  satisfies  the  mind  by  the  frank, 
honest  image  it  suggests: 

"  Moliere,"  she  says,  "  was  neither  too  fat  nor  too  thin;  his  figure 
was  tall  rather  than  short,  his  bearing  noble,  his  leg  handsome.  He 
walked  gravely,  had  a  very  serious  air,  a  big  nose,  a  large  mouth, 
thick  lips,  a  brown  skin,  black,  heavy  eyebrows,  and  the  movements 
he  gave  to  them  made  his  countenance  extremely  comical.  With  re- 
gard to  his  character:  he  was  gentle,  obliging,  generous  ;  he  liked  to 
harangue;  and  when  he  read  his  plays  to  the  comedians  he  wanted 
them  to  bring  their  children,  that  he  might  make  conjectures  from 
their  natural  emotions." 

What  is  shown  in  these  few  lines  of  Moliere's  manly 
beauty  reminds  me  of  a  tale  told  by  Tieck  of  the 
"very  human  face"  of  Shakespeare.  Shakespeare, 
young,  and  then  unknown,  was  waiting  in  the  par- 
lour of  an  inn  for  the  arrival  of  Lord  Southampton, 
who  was  about  to  become  his  protector  and  friend. 
He  was  listening  silently  to  the  poet  Marlowe,  who, 
without  taking  notice  of  the  unknown  youth,  was 
giving  vent  to  a  noisy  enthusiasm.  Lord  Southamp- 
ton, having  arrived  in  the  town,  sent  his  page  to  the 
inn:  "You  are  to  go,"  he  said,  "into  the  common 
room;  there,  you  must  look  attentively  at  all  the 
faces;  some,  remember  this,  will  look  to  you  like  the 
faces  of  less  noble  animals,  others  will  have  the  faces 


/IDoUere.  133 

of  more  noble  animals;  but  search  on  farther  till  you 
find  a  face  that  seems  to  you  to  resemble  nothing  but 
a  human  face.  That  is  the  man  I  want;  salute  him, 
and  bring  him  to  me."  The  young  page  hastened 
away;  he  entered  the  common  room  and  examined 
the  faces;  after  a  slow  examination,  finding  the  face 
of  the  poet  Marlowe  the  handsomest  of  all,  he  thought 
he  must  be  the  man  and  took  him  to  his  master. 
Marlowe's  countenance  was  not  without  resemblance 
to  the  head  of  a  noble  bull,  and  the  page,  child  that  he 
still  was,  was  struck  by  it.  But  Lord  Southampton 
afterwards  showed  him  his  mistake,  and  explained  to 
him  how  the  human  and  fitly  proportioned  face  of 
Shakespeare,  less  striking  when  first  seen,  was,  never- 
theless, the  more  beautiful.  What  Tieck  says  of  faces 
he  means  to  apply,  we  feel  sure,  to  the  inward 
genius. 

Moliere  never  separated  dramatic  works  from  their 
representation;  he  was  equally  director,  excellent 
actor,  and  fine  poet.  He  loved,  as  I  have  said,  the 
boards,  the  stage,  the  public;  he  clung  to  his  pre- 
rogatives as  director,  he  liked  to  harangue  on  certain 
solemn  occasions,  and  to  face  an  audience  that  was 
sometimes  stormy.  It  is  told  how  he  pacified  by  a 
speech  a  party  of  angry  moiisqueiaires,  whose  right 
of  entrance  to  the  theatre  had  been  withdrawn.  As 
actor,  his  contemporaries  agree  in  according  him  great 
perfection  in  comedy,  but  a  perfection  acquired 
through  study  and  by  force  of  will : 


134  /iDollere. 

"  Nature,"  says  Mile.  Poisson,  "  had  denied  him  those  external  gifts 
so  necessary  for  the  stage,  especially  for  tragic  roles.  A  muffled 
voice,  harsh  inflections,  a  volubility  of  tongue  that  made  his  declama- 
tion precipitate,  rendered  him  on  this  side  very  inferior  to  the  actors  of 
the  hotel  de  Bourgogne.  But  he  did  himself  justice  and  confined  his 
acting  chiefly  to  a  style  in  which  his  defects  were  more  bearable.  He 
had  much  difficulty,  however,  in  succeeding,  and  he  did  not  conquer 
his  volubility,  so  contrary  to  fine  articulation,  without  continual 
efforts  that  caused  him  a  hiccough  which  he  never  lost  to  the  day  of 
his  death  and  of  which  he  knew  well  how  to  make  use  on  occasions. 
To  vary  the  inflections  of  his  voice,  he  was  the  first  to  use  certain  un- 
usual tones,  for  which,  in  the  beginning,  he  was  accused  of  affectation, 
but  to  which  people  soon  accustomed  themselves.  He  gave  pleasure 
not  only  in  the  roles  of  Mascarille,  Sganarelle  and  Hali,  but  he  excelled 
in  those  of  the  highest  comedy,  such  as  Arnolphe,  Orgon,  Harpagon. 
It  was  then  that  by  truth  of  sentiment,  by  intelligence  of  expression, 
by  all  the  delicacies  of  his  art  he  fascinated  the  spectators  to  the  point 
of  no  longer  distinguishing  the  personage  represented  from  the  come- 
dian who  represented  him.  He  always  took  for  himself  the  longest 
and  most  difficult  parts." 

Moliere  was  grand  and  sumptuous  in  his  manner  of 
living,  possessing  thirty  thousand  livres  a  year,  which 
he  spent  in  liberalities,  receptions,  and  benefactions. 
His  domestic  service  was  not  confined  to  the  good 
Laforest,  the  celebrated  confidant  of  his  verses,  and 
people  of  rank,  to  whom  he  always  returned  their  hos- 
pitalities, found  nothing  bourgeois  and  a  la  Corneille 
in  his  home.  He  resided,  during  the  latter  part  of  his 
life,  in  the  rue  de  Richelieu,  facing  the  rue  Traversiere, 
about  where  No.  34  stands  to-day. 

Having  reached  the  age  of  forty,  at  the  summit  of 
his  art  and  apparently  of  his  fame,  strong  in  the  king's 
regard,  protected  and  sought  by  the  nobles,  frequently 
sent  for  by  the  Prince  de  Conde,  going  to  the  Due  de 


/TOoli^re.  135 

La  Rochefoucauld  to  read  his  Femmes  Savantes,  and  to 
the  old  Cardinal  de  Retz  to  read  the  Bourgeois  Gentil- 
homme  —  was  Moliere  (independently  of  his  domestic 
discords),  I  will  not  say  happy  in  his  life,  but  satisfied 
with  his  position  in  the  world  ?  or  must  we  assert 
that  he  was  not  ?  Stifle,  attenuate,  disguise  the  fact 
under  all  imaginable  reserves,  there  was  ever  in  Moli- 
ere's  position,  in  spite  of  the  brilliancy  of  his  talent 
and  his  favour,  something  from  which  he  suffered. 
He  suffered  in  lacking  at  times  a  certain  serious  and 
lofty  consideration;  the  comedian  in  him  detracted 
from  the  poet.  Every  one  laughed  at  his  plays,  but 
all  did  not  esteem  them  enough;  too  many  people 
took  him  as  their  best  means  of  amusement,  and  he 
felt  it  deeply.  Mme.  de  Sevigne  speaks  of  sending 
for  him  to  tickle  and  enliven  "that  good  old  cardinal." 
Chapelle  called  him  "great  man,"  but  his  chief 
friends,  Boileau  among  them,  regretted  in  him  a  mix- 
ture of  the  buffoon.  After  his  death,  de  Vise,  in  a 
letter  to  Grimarest,  contests  his  right  to  be  called 
"Monsieur" ;  and  while  his  funeral  procession  was 
passing  along  the  streets,  a  woman  of  the  populace 
being  asked  whose  it  was,  answered:  "Only  that 
Moliere."  Another  woman,  who  was  at  her  window 
and  overheard  the  remark,  cried  out:  "How!  You 
miserable  woman!  He  is  monsieur  for  such  as  you!  " 
Moliere,  clear-sighted  and  inexorable  observer  that  he 
was,  could  have  lost  nothing  of  a  thousand  such  mean 
and  petty  affronts  which  he  swallowed  with  outward 


136  jflDoliere. 

contempt.  Certain  honours  were  a  poor  compensa- 
tion, and  sometimes  a  bitter  one,  I  fancy;  such  as  the 
honour  of  making,  in  the  capacity  of  a  servant,  Louis 
XIV's  bed.  And  again,  when  Louis  XIV  made  him 
sit  at  his  own  table  and  said  aloud,  offering  him  the 
wing  of  a  chicken:  "Here  am  I  giving  supper  to 
Moliere,  whom  my  officers  do  not  <hink  good  enough 
company  for  them." 

Ten  months  before  his  death,  Moliere,  by  the  media- 
tion of  mutual  friends,  was  reconciled  to  his  wife, 
whom  he  still  loved,  and  even  became  father  of  a 
child  which  did  not  live.  The  change  of  habits, 
caused  by  this  resumption  of  married  life,  increased 
the  inflammatory  state  of  his  lungs.  Two  months 
before  his  death  he  received  the  visit  from  Boileau 
of  which  I  have  spoken.  On  the  day  of  the  fourth 
representation  of  the  Malade  imaginaire  he  felt  more 
ill  than  usual;  but  here  I  will  let  Grimarest  speak,  he 
having  received  from  the  actor  Baron  the  details  of 
the  scene,  the  plain  naivete  of  which  seems  to  me 
preferable  to  the  more  concise  correctness  of  others 
who  have  reproduced  it: 

"  Moliere,  feeling  more  oppressed  in  his  lungs  than  usual,  sent  for 
his  wife,  to  whom  he  said  in  presence  of  Baron:  '  My  whole  life  has 
been  equally  mingled  with  pleasure  and  pain;  I  have  thought  myself 
happy;  but  to-day,  when  I  am  so  overwhelmed  with  sufferings  that  I 
cannot  count  on  a  single  instant  of  relief,  I  see  that  I  must  give  up  the 
game;  I  can  bear  up  no  longer  against  sufferings  and  vexations  which 
give  me  not  one  moment's  reprieve.  But,'  he  added,  after  reflecting 
awhile,  '  how  much  a  man  can  suffer  without  dying!  Still,  I  feel  that 
I  am  coming  to  my  end.'     Mile.   Moliere  and  Baron  were  deeply 


/TDoUere.  137 

touched  by  this  address,  which  they  did  not  expect,  in  spite  of  his 
condition,  and  they  implored  him,  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  not  to  act 
that  evening,  but  to  take  some  rest  and  recover.  '  How  can  you  wish 
me  to  do  so?'  he  said;  '  there  are  fifty  poor  workmen  who  have  only 
their  daily  wages  to  live  on;  what  would  they  do  if  I  did  not  act? 
I  should  reproach  myself  for  having  neglected  to  give  them  bread  unless 
I  were  absolutely  unable  to  do  so.' " 

But  he  sent  for  the  comedians  and  said  to  them  that, 
feeling  more  uncomfortable  than  usual,  he  could  not 
play  that  day  unless  they  were  ready  to  act  at  four 
o'clock  precisely.  "Otherwise,"  he  said  to  them,  "I 
cannot  act  and  you  must  refund  the  money."  The 
comedians  had  the  chandeliers  lighted  and  the  curtain 
raised  at  four  o'clock  precisely.  Moliere  acted  with 
great  difficulty,  and  half  the  spectators  noticed  that  in 
pronouncing  the  word  Jure,  in  the  ceremony  of  the 
Malade  imaginaire,  a  convulsion  seized  him.  Ob- 
serving himself  that  the  audience  had  perceived  it,  he 
made  an  effort,  and  concealed  by  a  forced  laugh  what 
had  happened  to  him, 

"  When  the  play  was  over  he  took  his  dressing-gown  and  went  into 
Baron's  box  and  asked  him  what  was  said  of  the  piece.  M.  Baron 
replied  that  his  plays  always  had  good  success  the  closer  they  were  ex- 
amined, and  the  more  they  were  acted  the  more  they  were  liked.  '  But,' 
he  added,  '  you  seem  to  us  more  ill  than  you  were.'  '  That  is  true,'  re- 
plied Moliere,  '  I  am  chilled  to  death.'  Baron,  after  touching  his 
hands,  which  he  found  like  ice,  put  them  in  his  muff  to  warm  them;  he 
then  sent  for  Moliere's  porters  to  take  him  home  as  quickly  as  possible, 
and  did  not  himself  leave  the  side  of  the  chair,  fearing  that  something 
might  happen  between  the  Palais-Royal  and  the  rue  de  Richelieu,  where 
Moliere  lived.  When  he  was  in  his  room  Baron  wanted  him  to  take 
some  bouillon,  of  which  Mile.  Moliere  always  had  a  provision  for  her- 
self, for  no  one  could  take  more  care  of  themselves  than  she  did. 


138  /IDoll^re. 

'  Eh!  no,'  said  Moliere,  '  my  wife's  bouillons  are  strong  as  brandy  to 
me;  you  know  all  the  ingredients  she  puts  into  them.  Give  me  in- 
stead a  little  bit  of  Parmesan  cheese.'  Laforest  brought  him  some;  he 
ate  it  with  a  bit  of  bread,  and  had  himself  put  to  bed.  He  had  not 
been  there  more  than  a  minute  when  he  sent  to  his  wife  for  a  pillow 
filled  with  a  drug  she  had  promised  him  to  make  him  sleep.  '  All 
which  does  not  enter  the  body,'  he  said,  '  1  try  willingly;  but  remedies 
taken  internally  frighten  me;  it  would  take  very  little  to  make  me  lose 
what  remains  to  me  of  life.' 

"  An  instant  later  he  was  seized  with  an  extremely  violent  cough. 
After  spitting,  he  asked  for  a  light.  '  Here,'  he  said,  '  is  a  change.' 
Baron,  seeing  the  blood  he  had  just  thrown  up,  cried  out  in  terror. 
'Don't  be  frightened,'  said  Moliere,  'you  have  seen  me  throw  up 
much  more.  Nevertheless,'  he  added,  'go  and  tell  my  wife  to  come 
up.'  He  remained  in  the  care  of  two  sisters  of  charity,  of  those  who 
come  to  Paris  to  beg  for  the  poor  during  Lent,  and  to  whom  he  was  in 
the  habit  of  giving  hospitality.  They  gave  to  him  in  this  last  moment 
of  his  life  the  edifying  succour  to  be  expected  of  their  charity,  and  he 
made  apparent  to  them  the  sentiments  of  a  good  Christian,  and  all  the 
resignation  that  he  owed  to  the  will  of  the  Lord.  He  rendered  up  his 
soul  in  the  arms  of  these  two  good  sisters;  the  blood  that  flowed 
in  abundance  from  his  mouth  suffocated  him,  so  that  when  his  wife 
and  Baron  came  up  they  found  him  dead." 

It  was  Friday,  February  17,  1673,  at  ten  in  the 
evening,  one  hour  at  the  most  after  leaving  the  stage, 
that  Moliere  breathed  his  last  sigh,  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
one  years,  less  a  few  days.  The  rector  of  Saint- 
Eustache,  his  parish  church,  refused  him  Christian 
burial,  as  not  having  been  reconciled  with  the  Church 
before  death.  Moliere's  widow  addressed  a  petition 
on  the  20th  of  February  to  the  Archbishop  of  Paris, 
Harlay  de  Champvallon.  Accompanied  by  the  rector 
of  Auteuil,  she  went  to  Versailles  and  threw  herself  at 
the  king's  feet;  but  the  good  rector  seized  the  occasion 
to  free  himself  of  a  suspicion  of  Jansenism,  and  the 


flDoUere*  139 

king  silenced  him.  Besides  whicii,  if  all  must  be  told, 
Moliere,  being  dead,  could  no  longer  amuse  Louis 
XIV,  and  the  immense  selfishness  of  the  monarch, 
that  hideous,  incurable  selfishness  laid  bare  to  us  by 
Saint-Simon,  resumed  the  upper  hand.  Louis  XIV 
sent  the  widow  and  the  rector  abruptly  away,  at  the 
same  time  writing  to  the  archbishop  to  find  some  mid- 
dle course.  On  the  21st  of  February  Moliere's  body, 
accompanied  by  two  priests,  was  carried  by  night  to 
the  cemetery  of  Saint-Joseph,  rue  Montmartre.  Two 
hundred  persons  followed  it,  each  bearing  a  torch; 
no  funeral  anthem  was  allowed  to  be  sung.  On  the 
day  of  the  obsequies  the  crowd,  always  fanatic,  assem- 
bled around  Moliere's  house  with  apparently  hostile 
intentions;  it  was  dispersed  by  flinging  money  to  it. 
The  same  Parisian  crowd  was  less  easily  dispersed  on 
the  occasion  of  the  funeral  of  Louis  XIV. 

Hardly  was  he  dead,  before  Moliere  was  appreciated 
on  all  sides.  We  know  the  magnificent  lines  of 
Boileau,  who  rose  in  them  to  eloquence.  Moliere's 
reputation  has  since  shone  ever  higher  and  incontest- 
able. The  eighteenth  century  did  more  than  confirm 
it, — it  proclaimed  it  with  a  sort  of  philosophical  pride. 
Our  own  young  century,  accepting  that  fame  and 
never  calling  it  in  question,  made  use  of  it,  at  certain 
times,  as  an  auxiliary,  as  an  arm  of  defence  or  con- 
demnation. But  later,  comprehending  it  in  a  more 
equitable  manner,  comparing  it,  according  to  philoso- 
phy and  art,  with    other   renowns   of  neighbouring 


I40  /IDoliere. 

nations,  it  has  better  understood  and  respected  it.  Con- 
stantly enlarging  in  this  way,  Moliere's  reputation 
(marvellous  privilege!)  has  reached  its  true  measure, 
has  equalled  truth,  but  has  not  passed  beyond  it.  His 
genius  is  henceforth  one  of  the  ornaments,  one  of  the 
claims  of  the  genius  of  humanity  itself  Among  the 
great  world-fames  that  survive  and  last  there  are  many 
that  maintain  themselves  afar,  so  to  speak;  whose 
names  last  better  than  their  works  in  the  memory  of 
mankind.  Moliere  is  of  a  smaller  number,  whose  life 
and  works  are  sharers  in  all  the  possible  conquests  of 
the  new  civilisation.  Reputations,  future  geniuses, 
books,  may  multiply;  civilisations  may  transform 
themselves  hereafter,  but  five  or  six  great  works  have 
entered  inalienably  the  depths  of  human  thought. 
Every  coming  man  who  can  read  is  one  reader  the 
more  for  Moliere. 


V. 

!2la  fontaine. 


141 


V. 
Xa  ifontaine. 

IN  these  rapid  essays,  by  which  I  endeavour  to 
recall  the  attention  of  my  readers  and  myself 
to  pacific  memories  of  literature  and  poesy,  1 
have  imposed  no  law  upon  myself;  I  have  simply 
certain  principles  of  art  and  literary  criticism  which  I 
seek  to  apply,  without  violence  and  in  a  kindly  spirit, 
to  the  illustrious  authors  of  our  two  preceding  cent- 
uries. Moreover,  the  impression  that  a  recent  and  fresh 
reading  of  their  works  leaves  upon  me — a  simple,  frank 
impression,  quick  and  naive — is  that  which,  above 
all,  decides  the  tone  and  colour  of  my  remarks;  it  is 
that  which  impels  me  to  severity  against  Jean-Jacques, 
to  esteem  for  Boileau,  to  admiration  for  Mme.  de 
Sevigne,  Regnier,  and  others.  To-day  it  is  La  Fon- 
taine. Coming  to  him  after  so  many  panegyrists  and 
biographers,  I  find  myself  condemned  to  say  nothing 
fundamentally  new  and  to  do  no  more  than  reproduce 
in  my  own  way,  assigning  other  reasons  at  times, 
the  same  conclusions  of  praise,  the  same  homage  of  a 
disarmed  and  loving  criticism. 

It  must   be   said,  however,  that  if   La  Harpe  and 
Chamfort  praised  La  Fontaine  with  intuitive  sagacity, 

M3 


144  Xa  ffontaine. 

they  detached  him  far  too  much  from  his  century, 
which  was  much  less  known  to  them  than  to  us.  The 
eighteenth  century,  in  fact,  i<:new  little  of  Louis  XiV's 
epoch,  except  that  part  of  it  that  continued  and  was 
prevalent  under  Louis  XV.  It  ignored  or  disdained 
one  whole  portion,  by  which  that  reign  looked  back  to 
precedents;  a  portion  certainly  not  less  original,  which 
Saint-Simon  unveils  for  us  to-day.  Those  wonderful 
Memoirs,  which  until  now  have  been  thought  to  ruin 
the  glorious  prestige  and  grandeur  of  Louis  XIV,  seem 
to  us  in  these  days  to  restore  to  that  memorable  epoch 
a  character  of  grandeur  and  power,  hitherto  unsus- 
pected, and  to  rehabilitate  it  loftily  in  public  opinion, 
along  the  very  lines  that  destroy  the  notions  of  super- 
ficial admiration.  There  will  come,  1  think,  as  great 
variation  in  our  judgment  of  Louis  XIV's  epoch  as 
there  has  been  in  our  ways  of  seeing  and  judging  the 
things  of  Greece  and  the  Middle  Ages.  For  instance, 
men  studied  little,  or,  at  any  rate,  they  little  under- 
stood the  Greek  theatre;  they  admired  it  for  qualities 
it  did  not  have;  then,  casting  a  rapid  glance  upon  it 
and  perceiving  that  those  qualities  they  considered 
indispensable  were  often  lacking  to  it,  they  treated  it 
lightly, — witness  Voltaire  and  La  Harpe.  Finally, 
studying  it  better,  like  M.  Villemain,  men  began  to 
admire  it  precisely  for  not  possessing  those  qualities 
of  false  nobleness  and  stilted  dignity  which  they 
thought  they  saw  in  the  first  instance,  and,  later,  were 
disappointed  not  to  find. 


LA  FONTAINE. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


Xa  3foutalne.  145 

Opinions  have  followed  the  same  course  on  the 
Middle  Ages,  on  chivalry,  on  the  Gothic.  To  the 
golden  age  of  fancy  succeeded  sterner  studies,  which 
cast  some  trouble  into  that  first  romantic  region; 
then  those  studies,  becoming  stronger  and  more  in- 
telligent, came  at  last  to  an  age,  not  of  gold  but  of 
iron,  yet  marvellous  still;  an  age  of  simple  priests  and 
monks  more  powerful  than  kings,  of  mighty  barons 
whose  enormous  bones  and  gigantic  armour  frighten 
us;  an  art  of  granite  and  of  stone,  learned,  delicate, 
aerial,  majestic,  mystical.  In  like  manner  the  mon- 
archy of  Louis  XIV,  admired  at  first  for  the  ostenta- 
tious and  apparent  regularity  and  order  that  Voltaire 
extols,  then  revealed  in  its  real  infirmity  by  the 
Memoirs  of  Dangeau  and  the  Princess  Palatine,  and 
belittled  intentionally  by  Lemontey,  reappears  to  us 
in  Saint-Simon  vast,  impeded,  fluctuating,  in  a  confu- 
sion that  is  not  without  grandeur  and  beauty;  with 
the  running-gear  of  the  old  abolished  constitution 
more  and  more  useless,  but  with  all  that  habit  retains 
of  form  and  motion  even  after  the  spirit  and  mean- 
ing of  things  have  passed  away;  already  subject  to 
despotic  good  pleasure,  but  ill-disciplined  for  the 
supreme  etiquette  that  was  about  to  triumph. 

This  being  clearly  laid  down,  it  becomes  easy  to 
put  in  their  right  place,  and  to  see  in  their  true  light, 
the  men  native  to  the  time  who,  in  their  conduct  and 
in  their  works,  have  done  much  besides  fulfilling  the 
programme   of   the   master.      Without   this   general 

VOL.  II.— 10. 


146  Xa  Jfontaine. 

knowledge  we  run  some  risk  of  considering  them  too 
much  apart,  as  beings  aloof  and  accidental.  This 
is  what  the  critics  of  the  last  century  did  in  speaking 
of  La  Fontaine;  they  isolated  him,  and  they  exag- 
gerated him  in  their  portraits;  they  gave  him  a  far 
more  complete  personality  than  was  needed  in  regard 
to  his  works,  and  they  imagined  him,  out  of  all  pro- 
portion, a  jovial  fellow  and  fable-maker.  They  could 
explain  to  themselves  Boileau  and  Racine  far  more 
easily,  because  they  belonged  to  the  regular  and  visible 
portion  of  the  epoch  and  were  its  purest  literary 
expression. 

There  were  men  who,  following  the  general  move- 
ment of  their  century,  retain  none  the  less  a  deep,  in- 
delible individuality:  Moliere  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
striking  example.  There  are  others  who,  without 
going  in  the  direction  of  the  general  movement,  and 
showing  consequently  a  certain  originality  of  their 
own,  have  less  of  it  than  they  seem  to  have.  In  the 
style  or  manner  that  discriminates  them  from  their 
contemporaries  there  is  much  imitation  of  the  pre- 
ceding age;  and  in  this  striking  contrast  which  they 
present  to  what  surrounds  them  we  ought  to  recog- 
nise and  allow  for  what  belongs  of  right  to  their 
predecessors.  It  is  among  the  men  of  this  class  that 
La  Fontaine  must  be  ranked;  he  was,  in  fact,  under 
Louis  XIV,  the  last  and  the  greatest  of  the  poets  of 
the  sixteenth  century. 

Born  in  162 1,  at  Chateau  Thierry  in  Touraine,  his 


Xa  ifontaine*  147 

education  was  much  neglected,  and  he  early  gave 
proof  of  his  extreme  inclination  to  let  himself  go  in 
life  and  to  obey  the  impressions  of  the  moment.  A 
canon  of  Soissons  having  one  day  lent  him  a  few 
books  of  piety,  the  young  lad  fancied  he  had  a  lean- 
ing to  the  clerical  profession,  and  he  entered  the 
seminary.  He  was  not  long  in  leaving  it;  and  his 
father,  having  married  him,  made  over  to  him  his 
office  of  Director  of  Waters  and  Forests.  But  La 
Fontaine,  with  his  natural  forgetfulness  and  laziness, 
accustomed  himself  by  degrees  to  live  as  if  he  had 
neither  office  nor  wife.  He  was  not  as  yet  a  poet, 
however,  or,  at  any  rate,  he  did  not  know  that  he  was 
one.  Chance  put  him  in  the  way  of  knowing  it.  An 
officer  who  was  in  winter  quarters  at  Chateau 
Thierry  read  to  him  one  day  an  ode  by  Malherbe,  the 
subject  of  which  was  an  attempt  on  the  life  of  Henri 
IV;  and  La  Fontaine,  from  that  moment,  thought  he 
was  destined  to  write  odes.  He  composed  a  number, 
it  is  said,  and  very  bad  ones;  but  one  of  his  relations, 
named  Pintrel,  and  a  schoolmate,  Maucroix,  dissuaded 
him  from  that  style  and  urged  him  to  study  the 
classics.  It  was  also  about  this  time  that  he  began  to 
read  Rabelais,  Marot,  and  the  poets  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  basis  of  a  provincial  library  at  that  period. 
In  1654  he  published  a  translation  in  verse  of  the 
"Eunuch"  of  Terence;  and  one  of  his  wife's  rela- 
tions, Jannart,  friend  and  deputy  of  Fouquet,  took  him 
to  Paris  to  present  him  to  the  Superintendent  himself. 


148  Xa  ifontaine. 

This  journey  and  presentation  decided  La  Fontaine's 
fate.  Touquet  took  a  liking  to  liim,  attached  him  to 
himself,  and  gave  him  a  salary  of  one  thousand  francs 
on  condition  of  his  producing  every  quarter  a  piece  of 
poetry,  ballad  or  madrigal,  dizain  or  sixain.  These 
little  pieces  with  the  Songe  de  Vaux  [Vaux  being 
Fouquet's  country-seat]  are  the  first  original  produc- 
tions of  La  Fontaine  that  we  possess;  they  belong 
wholly  to  the  taste  of  that  day,  the  taste  of  Saint- 
Evremond  and  Benserade,  and  to  the  marotisme  of 
Sarasin  and  Voiture ;  but  the  inexpressible  something 
of  easy  indolence  and  voluptuous  revery  characteristic 
of  the  delightful  writer  is  already  perceptible,  though 
much  overloaded  with  insipidity  and  bel  esprit. 

Fouquet's  poet  was  greeted  from  his  start  in  Paris 
as  one  of  the  most  delicate  ornaments  of  ihe  polished 
and  gallant  society  of  Saint-Mande  and  Vaux.  He 
was  very  agreeable  in  company,  especially  that  of 
private  life;  his  conversation,  free,  easy,  and  naive, 
was  seasoned  now  and  then  with  roguish  wit,  his 
absence  of  mind  being  checked  in  time  to  be  only  a 
charm  the  more.  He  was  certainly  less  of  the  good- 
man  in  society  than  Corneille.  Women,  slumber, 
and  the  art  of  doing  nothing  shared  in  turn  his  homage 
and  his  devotion.  He  boasted  of  this  sometimes,  and 
talked  readily  of  himself  and  his  tastes  to  others  with- 
out ever  wearying  them,  though  making  them  smile. 
Intimacy,  especially,  brought  out  his  charm;  he  gave 
it  an  affectionate  turn,  a  tone  of  familiar  good-breed- 


%a  jfontaine,  149 

ing:  he  let  himself  go  to  it  like  a  man  who  forgets  all 
else,  and  who  takes  seriously  or  with  easy  jesting 
every  passing  caprice.  His  acknowledged  liking  for  the 
fair  sex  did  not  make  him  dangerous  to  women  unless 
they  wished  it.  In  fact  La  Fontaine,  like  Regnier,  his 
predecessor,  liked  best  all  "easy  and  little-defended 
loves."  While  he  was  addressing  Climene,  Iris,  and 
the  goddesses,  on  his  knees  with  respectful  sighs, 
employing  what  he  thought  he  had  learned  from 
Plato,  he  was  seeking  elsewhere,  and  far  lower,  for 
less  mystical  pleasures  which  helped  him  to  bear 
his  fictitious  martyrdom  with  patience.  Among  his 
bottnes  fortunes  soon  after  his  arrival  in  Paris  was  the 
celebrated  Claudine,  third  wife  of  Guillaume  Colletet 
and  his  cook  (Colletet  always  married  his  servant- 
women).  Our  poet  often  visited  the  good  old  rhymer 
at  his  house  in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Marceau,  and 
courted  Claudine  while  discussing  the  authors  of  the 
sixteenth  century  at  supper  with  her  master,  who 
could  give  him  good  counsel  thereon  and  reveal  to 
him  riches  by  which  he  profited. 

During  the  first  six  years  of  his  residence  in  Paris 
and  until  the  fall  of  Fouquet,  La  Fontaine  produced 
little;  he  gave  himself  up  wholly  to  the  pleasures  of  a 
life  of  enchantment  and  festivity,  to  the  delights  of  a 
choice  society  which  enjoyed  his  ingenuous  talk, 
and  appreciated  his  gallant  trifling.  But  this  dream 
vanished  on  the  downfall  of  the  enchanter.  Matters 
were  thus,   when,   the  Duchesse  de  Bouillon,  niece 


15©  %a  ifontaine. 

of  Mazarin,  having  asked  the  poet  for  some  tales  in 
verse,  he  hastened  to  satisfy  her,  and  the  first  collec- 
tion of  Contes  appeared  in  1664.  La  Fontaine  was 
then  forty-four  years  old.  Critics  have  sought  to  ex- 
plain this  tardy  first  appearance  of  so  facile  a  genius; 
and  some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  attribute  his  long 
silence  to  secret  studies,  to  a  laborious  and  prolonged 
education.  But  in  truth,  while  La  Fontaine  never 
ceased  testing  and  cultivating  his  talent  in  his  leisure 
moments  from  the  day  Malherbe  revealed  it  to  him, 
I  much  prefer  to  believe  in  his  laziness,  his  somno- 
lence, his  absent-mindedness,  all,  in  short,  that  was 
naive  and  forgetful  in  him,  raihsr  than  admit  that  he 
ever  went  through  the  wearisome  novitiate  to  which 
those  critics  have  condemned  him.  Instinctive,  heed- 
less genius,  fickle,  volatile,  ever  the  sport  of  circum- 
stances, we  have  only  to  recall  certain  features  of  his 
life  to  know  him  and  comprehend  him:  On  leaving 
college,  a  canon  of  Soissons  lends  him  a  pious  book — 
behold  him  in  the  seminary;  an  officer  reads  him  an 
ode  of  Malherbe,  and  lo  !  he  is  a  poet;  Pintrel  and 
Maucroix  turn  him  to  antiquity,  and  he  dreams  of 
Quintilian  and  dotes  on  Plato  while  awaiting  Baruch; 
Fouquet  orders  drains  and  ballads,  and  he  makes 
them;  the  Duchesse  de  Bouillon,  tales,  and  he  tells 
them;  another  day  it  is  fables  for  Monseigneur  the 
dauphin,  a  poem  on  quinine  for  Mme.  de  Bouillon; 
again,  an  opera  of  Daphne  for  Lulli,  the  Captivite  de 
Saint-Male  at  the  request  of  Port-Royal;  or  else  it 


Xa  dfontaine,  151 

may  be  letters,  long,  flowery,  negligent  letters,  mix- 
tures of  verse  and  prose,  to  his  wife,  to  M.  de  Mau- 
croix,  to  Saint-Evremond,  to  the  Contis,  to  the 
Vendomes,  to  all,  in  short,  who  demand  them.  La 
Fontaine  spent  his  genius,  as  he  did  his  time  and  his 
fortune,  without  knowing  how,  and  in  the  service  of 
every  one.  If  up  to  the  age  of  forty  he  seems  less 
prolific  than  he  was  later,  it  is  because  occasions  were 
lacking  to  him,  and  his  natural  laziness  needed  to  be 
overcome  by  gentle  violence  from  without.  No 
sooner  did  he  meet  at  forty-three  years  of  age  with 
the  style  and  manner  that  suited  him — that  of  conte 
and  fable  —  than  it  was  quite  natural  he  should  give 
himself  to  it  with  a  sort  of  effusion,  and  return  to  it 
again  and  again,  of  his  own  accord,  from  liking  as 
well  as  from  habit. 

La  Fontaine,  it  is  true,  was,  in  some  respects,  a 
little  mistaken  about  his  gifts;  he  piqued  himself 
much  on  correction  and  labour;  and  his  poetic  art, 
which  he  mainly  derived  from  Maucroix,  and  which 
Boileau  and  Racine  completed  for  him,  accorded  ill 
with  the  natural  character  of  his  work.  But  this 
slight  inconsistency,  which  he  has  in  common  with 
other  great,  ingenuous  minds  of  his  day,  is  not  surpris- 
ing in  him,  and  confirms,  far  more  than  it  contradicts, 
the  opinion  1  have  of  the  facile  and  accommodating 
nature  of  his  genius. 

What  La  Fontaine  is  in  tale,  all  the  world  knows; 
what  he  is  in  fable,  the  world  also  knows  and  feels; 


IS2  Xa  ifontalnc. 

but  it  is  much  less  easy  to  explain  it.  Authors  of  in- 
telligence have  tried  the  same  style  and  failed;  they 
have  put  in  action,  according  to  precept,  animals,  trees, 
men;  hiding  a  sly  meaning,  a  healthy  moral  under 
their  little  dramas;  and  then,  to  their  surprise,  they  are 
judged  inferior  to  their  illustrious  predecessor.  The 
reason  is  that  La  Fontaine  understood  Fable  in  a  differ- 
ent way.  I  except  his  first  books,  in  which  he  shows 
timidity,  holds  closer  to  his  little  tale,  and  is  not  yet 
wholly  at  his  ease  in  this  form,  which  adapted  itself  less 
immediately  to  his  mind  than  did  the  elegy  or  the  conte. 
When  the  second  collection  appeared,  containing  five 
books  (from  the  sixth  to  the  eleventh  included),  con- 
temporary critics  cried  out,  as  they  always  do,  that  it 
was  much  below  the  first.  Yet  it  is  in  that  collection 
that  we  find,  in  its  perfection.  Fable,  such  as  La  Fon- 
taine invented  it.  He  had  ended,  evidently,  by  finding 
in  it  a  framework  suited  to  thoughts,  to  sentiments, 
and  to  talk;  the  little  drama  at  the  base  is  made  more 
important  than  before;  the  moral,  four  lines  at  the  end, 
is  still  there  from  force  of  habit,  but  the  Fable,  freer  in 
its  course,  turns  and  gathers  on  its  way,  now  from 
elegy  or  idyll,  anon  from  epistle  or  tale,  here  an  anec- 
dote, there  a  conversation,  a  theme  rising  to  fancy  — 
a  mixture  of  charming  avowals,  gentle  philosophies, 
and  dreamy  plaints. 

Nevertheless,  in  his  first  manner,  at  the  close  of  the 
first  book,  in  the  Chine  et  le  Roseau,  he  attained  the 
perfection  of  the  Fable,  properly  so-called;  he  found 


%i\  jfontaine.  153 

means  to  introduce  into  it  grandeur  and  the  higher 
poesy,  without  exceeding  its  limits  by  an  iota;  he  was 
master  already.  In  Le  Meunier,  son  Fits  et  I' Am, 
he  jokes,  he  talks,  he  makes  the  masters,  Malherbe 
and  Racan,  talk,  and  the  apologue  is  merely  an  adorn- 
ment of  the  discourse.  But  his  second  manner  begins 
more  distinctly  and  declares  itself,  as  I  have  said,  in 
the  second  collection,  seventh  book,  which  opens  with 
the  fable  of  the  animals  ill  of  the  plague.  In  his  pre- 
face the  poet  himself  acknowledges  that  he  has  di- 
verged a  little  from  the  pure  fable  of  y^sop,  and  has 
"sought  for  other  enrichment  and  has  extended  farther 
the  circumstances  of  his  tale." 

When  we  take  up  the  seventh  book  of  the  Fables 
and  read  it  consecutively,  we  are  enraptured;  it  has 
truly  "a  charm,"  as  the  poet  says  in  his  Dedication; 
little  masterpieces  succeed  one  another:  Le  Cocheetla 
Moucke,  La  Laiiiere  et  le  Pot  au  lait,  Le  Cure  et  le 
Mort ;  scarcely  one  that  we  can  call  mediocre  steps  in 
(such  as  La  Tete  et  Queue  du  Serpent).  The  Fable 
that  ends  Book  VII,  Un  Animal  dans  la  Lune,  dis- 
closes in  La  Fontaine  a  philosophical  faculty  that  his 
native  naivetS  'Wo\i\d  scarcely  allow  us  to  suspect;  the 
simple  man,  who  might  be  thought  credulous  when 
you  argued  with  him,  because  he  always  had  an  air  of 
listening  to  your  reasons  without  thinking  to  give  you 
his,  proves  a  rival  of  Lucretius  and  of  that  elite  of 
great  poets  who  have  thought.  He  treats  of  things 
of  Nature  with  elevation  of  mind  and  firmness.     In 


154  2.a  jfontaiue. 

the  physical  world,  not  less  than  in  the  moral  world, 
appearances  do  not  mislead  him.  Speaking  of  the 
sun,  he  says  in  language  that  Copernicus  or  Galileo 
would  not  disavow: 


I  see  the  sun :   what  figure  doth  it  bear  ? 

Its  great  mass  here  below  seems  scarce  three  feet; 

But  did  1  see  it  at  its  own  great  height, 

'T  would  seem  to  my  eyes  like  the  Eye  of  Nature. 

Distance  enables  me  to  judge  its  size, 

By  angle  and  by  outline  1  determine  it: 

Ignorance  thinks  it  flat;    but  round  1  deem  it; 

I  make  it  motionless;    'tis  earth  that  moves." 


Pascal  himself,  geometrician  that  he  was,  would  not 
have  dared  to  say  more  on  the  movement  of  the  earth. 
Again,  in  his  Fable  of  Democrite  et  les  Abderitains,  his 
thought  is  far  above  vulgar  prejudices.  No  one  in  his 
day  refuted  more  wittily  than  he  Descartes  and  the 
Cartesians  on  the  souls  of  animals,  and  those  pre- 
tended mechanisms  which  the  haughty  philosopher 
knew  no  better  than  he  knew  the  human  being  he 
flattered  himself  he  explained.  In  the  Fable,  Les  deux 
Rats,  le  Renard  et  I'CEuf,  addressed  to  Mme.  de  La 
Sabliere,  La  Fontaine  discusses  and  reasons  on  these 
subtle  matters;  he  even  offers  his  own  explanation, 
but,  wise  man  that  he  is,  he  is  careful  not  to  venture  a 
conclusion.  In  Les  Souris  et  le  Chat-Huant\\e  returns 
to  that  philosophic  subject;  in  Les  Lapins,  addressed 
to  M.  de  La  Rochefoucauld,  he  returns  again  and  ar- 
gues it,  but  he  enlivens  his  arguments  with  gaiety 


Xa  3fontalne.  155 

after  his  fashion,  sending  through  them,  as  it  were,  a 
fragrance  of  heather  and  of  thyme. 

At  the  end  of  the  fable,  Un  Animal  dans  la  Lime, 
La  Fontaine  enlarges  on  the  happiness  of  England, 
which  was  then  escaping  the  risks  of  war  ;  and  in 
speaking  of  that  first,  full  glory  of  Louis  XIV,  he  gives 
voice  to  words  of  peace;  he  does  it  with  delicacy  and 
recognition  of  the  exploits  of  the  monarch,  admitting 
that  "peace  is  our  desire,  though  not  our  prayer." 
Whenever  he  has  to  speak  of  the  masters  of  earth,  of 
the  Lion,  which  represents  them  in  his  Fables,  La 
Fontaine  shows  plainly  that  he  is  neither  seduced  nor 
dazzled  by  them.  But  in  all  that  he  has  written 
against  monarchs  and  lions  it  would  be  a  mistake  to 
conclude  that  he  did  it  with  a  purpose,  or  was  hostile 
to  them  in  any  way.  To  interpret  him  thus  would  be 
narrow  and  unpoetic;  if,  speaking  of  the  great  and 
the  powerful,  he  did  not  withhold  the  lesson  that  es- 
capes him,  still  less  did  he  intend  to  flatter  the  people, 
that  people  of  Athens  that  he  somewhere  calls  an 
"animal  with  frivolous  heads." 

I  shall  not  presume  here  to  classify  La  Fontaine's 
Fables;  it  would  be  to  misunderstand  their  spirit  and 
hamper  their  diversity.  But  foremost  in  the  order  of 
beauty  we  must  place  those  grand  moral  fables,  Le 
Berger  et  le  Roi  and  Le  Paysan  dii  Danube,  in  which 
there  is  an  eloquent  sentiment  of  history  and  almost 
of  statesmanship.  Next  come  other  fables  which, 
taken  together,  form  a  complete  picture,  a  rounded 


156  Xa  jfontatne. 

whole,  and  are  equally  full  of  philosophy:  Le  Vieil- 
lard  et  les  trois  Jeiines  Homines  ;  Le  Savetier  et  le  Fin- 
ancier ;  the  latter  as  perfect  in  itself  as  some  grand 
scene,  some  compact  comedy  of  Moliere.  There  are 
elegies,  properly  so-called,  such  as:  Tirces  et  Ama- 
ranthe,  and  other  elegies  less  direct  but  more  enchant- 
ing,—  Les  Deux  Pigeons,  for  example. 

Though  human  nature  is  often  treated  with  severity 
by  La  Fontaine,  though  he  flatters  the  species  in  no 
way,  though  he  says  that  childhood  is  "without 
pity,"  and  that  old  age  is  "pitiless,"  still,  in  spite  of 
all,  he  is  not  the  calumniator  of  mankind;  on  the  con- 
trary, he  will  ever  remain  its  consoler  in  one  respect, 
namely:  that  friendship  has  found  in  him  so  constant 
and  so  tender  an  interpreter.  His  Deux  Amis  is  the 
masterpiece  of  that  topic;  but  on  all  the  other  occa- 
sions when  he  speaks  of  friendship,  his  heart  opens, 
his  mocking  observation  dies;  he  has  words  of  feeling 
that  he  feels,  tones  either  tender  or  generous,  as  when 
he  lauds  in  Mme.  d'Hervart 

"  Nobility  of  soul,  the  talent  to  conduct 
Affairs  and  men; 
A  temper  frank  and  free,  the  gift  to  be  a  friend 
in  spite  of  Jupiter  and  stormy  skies." 

It  is  when  we  have  read  in  a  single  day  a  chosen 
quantity  of  La  Fontaine's  Fables  that  we  feel  our  ad- 
miration for  him  renewed  and  refreshed,  and  that  we 
say  with  an  eminent  critic  [Joubert],   "There  is  in 


%a  Jfontalne.  157 

La  Fontaine  a  plenitude  of  poesy  that  is  found  no- 
where else  among  French  authors." 

La  Fontaine  is  our  only  great  personal,  pensive, 
musing  poet  before  Andre  Chenier.  He  puts  himself 
knowingly  into  his  verse,  he  tells  us  about  himself,  his 
soul,  his  caprices,  his  weaknesses.  Usually  his  tone 
breathes  gaiety,  roguish  malice,  mischief,  and  the  jolly 
conteiir  laughs  to  us  from  the  corner  of  his  eye,  wag- 
ging his  head.  But  often,  also,  he  has  tones  that 
come  from  the  heart,  a  melancholy  tenderness  that 
brings  him  close  to  the  poets  of  our  own  time.  Those 
of  the  sixteenth  century  had  already  had  some  foretaste 
of  revery ;  but  with  them  its  individual  inspiration  was 
lacking.  La  Fontaine  restored  to  it  a  primitive  char- 
acter of  vivid  and  discreet  expression;  he  freed  it  of 
all  it  had  contracted  of  commonplace  and  sensual;  on 
this  side  Plato  did  him  the  good  he  once  did  to  Pe- 
trarch; and  when  La  Fontaine  exclaims  in  one  of  his 
delightful  fables : 

"  Shall  I  feel  no  more  the  charm  that  holds  me? 
Have  I  passed  the  time  to  love  ?  " 

The  word  charm,  thus  employed  in  a  sense  indefinite 
and  wholly  metaphysical,  marks  a  progress  in  French 
poesy  that  was,  later,  taken  up  and  followed  by  Andre 
Chenier  and  his  successors. 

Friend  of  retirement,  of  solitude,  and  painter  of  the 
fields.  La  Fontaine  has  the  additional  advantage  over 
his  predecessors  in  the  sixteenth  century  of  giving  to 


158  %a  fontaim, 

his  pictures  faithful  colours  that  render  the  region  truly 
and,  so  to  speak,  the  soil  itself.  Those  vast  plains  of 
wheat,  where  the  master  walks  early  and  the  lark 
hides  her  nest;  those  bushes  and  copses  and  bracken 
where  a  whole  little  world  is  swarming;  those  pretty 
warrens,  whose  giddy  inhabitants  pay  court  to  Aurora 
in  the  dew  and  perfume  their  banquet  with  thyme  — 
all  is  Beauce,  Champagne,  Picardy;  I  recognise  the 
farms  with  their  ponds,  their  poultry  yards,  their  dove- 
cotes. La  Fontaine  had  well  observed  those  regions, 
if  not  as  Director  of  Waters  and  Forests,  at  least  as 
poet.  He  was  born  there,  he  lived  there  long;  and 
even  after  he  was  settled  in  Paris  he  returned  every 
autumn  to  Chateau  Thierry  to  visit  his  property  and 
sell  it  piecemeal,  for  Jean,  as  we  know,  "spent  capi- 
tal and  revenue." 

When  all  La  Fontaine's  property  was  dissipated,  and 
the  sudden  death  of  Madame  [Henriette,  Duchesse 
d'Orleans]  deprived  him  of  the  office  of  gentleman- 
in-waiting  which  he  held  in  her  household,  Mme.  de 
La  Sabliere  invited  him  to  her  house  and  took  care 
of  him  for  twenty  years.  Abandoned  in  his  habits, 
ruined  in  fortune,  without  abode  or  hearth,  it  was  for 
him  and  for  his  genius  an  inestimable  blessing  to  find 
himself  maintained,  under  the  auspices  of  an  amiable 
woman,  in  the  heart  of  a  witty  and  well-bred  society, 
and  with  all  the  comforts  of  opulence.  He  keenly 
felt  the  value  of  this  benefit;  and  his  inviolable  friend- 
ship, familiar  yet  respectful,  which  death  alone  could 


%a  jfoutaine.  159 

break,  is  one  of  the  natural  sentiments  he  succeeded 
best  in  expressing. 

At  the  feet  of  Mme.  de  La  Sabiiere  and  of  other  dis- 
tinguished women  whom  he  celebrated  and  respected, 
his  muse,  soiled  at  times,  resumed  a  sort  of  purity 
and  freshness,  which  his  rather  vulgar  tastes,  growing 
less  and  less  scrupulous  with  age,  tended  too  much  to 
weaken.  His  life,  thus  orderly  amid  disorder,  became 
dual;  he  made  it  into  two  parts:  one  elegant,  ani- 
mated, intelligent,  and  open  to  the  light;  the  other 
obscure  and,  it  must  be  said,  shameful,  given  over  to 
those  prolonged  dissipations  which  youth  embellishes 
with  the  name  of  "pleasures,"  but  which  are  vices 
on  the  forehead  of  old  age.  Mme.  de  La  Sabiiere 
herself,  who  rebuked  La  Fontaine,  had  not  always 
been  exempt  from  human  passions  and  frailties;  but 
when  the  unfaithfulness  of  the  Marquis  de  La  Fare 
left  her  heart  free  and  empty,  she  felt  that  no  other 
than  God  could  henceforth  fill  it,  and  she  devoted  her 
last  years  to  the  most  active  exercise  of  Christian 
charity.  This  conversion,  as  sincere  as  it  was  glitter- 
ing, took  place  in  1683.  La  Fontaine  was  moved  to 
think  it  an  example  he  ought  to  follow;  his  frailty, 
and  other  intimacies  that  he  contracted  about  that 
time,  deterred  him;  and  it  was  not  until  ten  years 
later,  when  the  death  of  Mme.  de  La  Sabiiere  gave 
him  a  second  and  solemn  warning,  that  this  seed  of 
good  thoughts  sprang  up  within  him  to  wilt  no  more. 
But,  even  in  1684,  the  year  after  her  conversion,  he 


i6o  Xa  jfontalne, 

wrote  an  admirable  Discours  en  Vers,  which  he  read 
before  the  French  Academy  on  the  day  of  his  recep- 
tion, in  which,  addressing  his  benefactress,  he  shows 
her  with  candid  truth  the  state  of  his  soul: 

"  Of  solid  joys  I  follow  but  the  shadow; 
1  have  abused  the  dearest  of  our  boons — 
Amusing  thoughts,  gay  dreams,  and  vague  discourses, 
Delights  chimerical,  vain  fruits  of  leisure, 
Novels  and  cards,  the  curse  of  all  republics, 
By  which  e'en  upright  minds  may  be  misled, 
A  foolish  madness  scoffing  at  the  laws, 
With  other  passions  by  wise  men  condemned. 
Have  plucked,  like  thieves,  the  flower  of  my  years. 
To  seek  true  good  would  still  repair  these  ills; 
I  know  it — yet  1  turn  to  false  gods  ever." 

This  is,  as  we  see,  a  grave,  ingenuous  confession, 
in  which  religious  unction  and  lofty  morality  do  not 
quite  prevent  a  lingering,  loving  glance  toward  those 
"chimerical  delights  "  from  which  he  was  ill-detached. 
A  simplicity  of  exaggeration  enters  into  it;  novels  and 
cards  that  entice  the  sinner  are  "the  curse  of  re- 
publics, a  madness  that  laughs  at  laws"! 

"  What  profit  in  these  lines  with  care  composed? 
Need  1  no  other  fruit  than  praise  for  them  ? 
Little  their  counsels  if  I  heed  them  not, 
And,  at  the  close  of  life,  do  not  begin  to  live. — 
For  live  I  have  not;  I  have  served  two  masters, 
An  empty  fame  and  love  have  filled  my  years. 
What,  then,  is  living?     Iris,  you  could  tell  me! 
Your  answer  promptly  comes;   I  seem  to  'learit: 
'  Enjoy  true  good  in  sweet  tranquillity, 
Make  use  of  time,  and  of  thy  leisure  hours; 
Pay  honour  where  't  is  due — to  God  alone; 


Xa  ffontaine.  i6i 

Renounce  thy  Phyllises  in  favour  of  thyself; 
Banish  those  foolish  loves,  those  impotent  desires, 
Like  Hydras  in  our  hearts  incessantly  reborn.'  " 

Sincere,  eloquent,  sublime  poesy,  of  a  singular  turn, 
where  virtue  contrives  to  make  terms  with  idleness, 
where  Phyllis  and  the  Supreme  Being  are  side  by 
side;  poesy  that  gives  birth  to  a  smile  in  a  tear! 
Alas!  why  did  La  Fontaine  never  know  the  "God  of 
good  men "  ?  It  would  have  cost  him  less  to  be 
converted. 

At  first  sight,  and  judging  only  by  his  works, 
art  and  labour  seem  to  have  had  but  little  place  in  La 
Fontaine,  and  if  the  attention  of  critics  had  not  been 
awakened  on  this  point  by  a  few  words  in  his  prefaces, 
and  by  certain  contemporaneous  testimony,  we  should 
probably  never  have  thought  of  making  a  question  of 
it.  But  the  poet  "confesses  "  in  the  preface  to  Psyche 
that  "  prose  costs  him  as  much  trouble  as  poesy."  In 
one  of  his  last  Fables,  written  for  the  Due  de  Bour- 
gogne,  he  complains  of  "manufacturing  under  stress 
of  time  "  verses  that  have  less  sense  than  the  prose  of 
the  young  prince.  His  manuscripts  are  full  of  erasures 
and  changes ;  the  same  pieces  are  copied  several  times, 
and  often  with  very  happy  alterations.  It  is  amusing 
to  see  the  care  that  he  gives  to  errata.  "Several 
errors  in  printing  have  slipped  in,"  he  says  in  the 
preface  to  his  second  collection:  "I  have  made  them 
make  an  errata,  but  that  is  a  small  remedy  for  a  con- 
siderable defect.     If  the  reader  is  to  have  any  pleasure 

VOL.  II. II. 


i62  Xa  ifontatne. 

in  this  work  he  must  correct  those  errors  with  his 
own  hand  in  his  copy  according  as  they  are  given  in 
each  erratum,  as  much  for  the  first  two  parts  as  for  the 
last." 

La  Fontaine  read  much,  not  only  the  moderns, 
French  and  Italian,  but  the  classics,  in  the  original  or 
in  translation;  he  plumes  himself  repeatedly  upon  it. 
His  erudition,  however,  makes  singular  blunders  and 
is  charmingly  confused  in  places.  In  his  Vie  d'Esope 
he  says:  "As  Planude  lived  in  a  century  when  the 
memory  of  things  that  happened  to  /Esop  had  not  yet 
faded,  I  think  he  knew  by  tradition  what  the  latter 
left  behind  him."  In  writing  thus  he  forgot  that  nine- 
teen centuries  had  elapsed  between  the  Phrygian  and 
his  editor,  and  that  the  Greek  monk  lived  barely  two 
centuries  before  the  reign  of  Louis  the  Great.  In  an 
epistle  to  Huet  in  favour  of  the  ancients  over  the  mod- 
erns, and  in  special  honour  of  Quintilian,  he  reverts  to 
Plato,  his  favourite  topic,  and  declares  that  among 
modern  sages  not  one  can  approach  that  great  phi- 
losopher: 

"  All  Greece  is  swarming  in  his  smallest  corner." 

He  attributes  the  decadence  of  the  ode  in  France  to  a 
cause  that  one  would  never  have  imagined: 

"      ...     the  ode,  which  doth  expire, 
Needs  patience,  and  our  men  have  only  fire." 

In  this  remarkable  epistle  he  protests  against  servile 
imitation  of  the   ancients,  and   tries   to   explain   the 


Xa  jfontaine.  163 

nature  of  his  own  imitation.  I  advise  all  those  who  are 
curious  in  such  matters  to  compare  this  passage  with 
the  end  of  the  second  epistle  of  Andre  Chenier;  the 
idea  at  bottom  is  the  same,  but  the  reader  will  see,  on 
comparing  the  two  expressions  of  it,  the  profound 
difference  that  separated  a  poet-artist  like  Chenier 
from  a  poet  of  instinct  like  La  Fontaine. 

That  which  is  true  up  to  this  time  of  nearly  all  our 
poets  except  Moliere  and  perhaps  Corneille,  —  that 
which  is  true  of  Marot,  Ronsard,  Regnier,  Malherbe, 
Boileau,  Racine,  and  Andre  Chenier, — is  true  also  of  La 
Fontaine:  when  we  have  surveyed  his  various  merits 
we  must  end  by  saying  that  it  is  in  style  that  he 
excels.  With  Moliere,  on  the  contrary,  with  Dante, 
Shakespeare,  and  Milton,  the  style  equals  the  inven- 
tion, no  doubt,  but  never  surpasses  it;  the  manner  of 
utterance  reflects  the  depths  below,  but  never  eclipses 
them.  As  to  La  Fontaine's  special  manner,  it  is  too 
well  known  and  too  well  analysed  elsewhere  for  me 
to  recur  to  it  here.  Let  it  suffice  to  remark  that  there 
is  in  it  quite  a  large  admixture  of  gallant  insipidities 
and  false  pastoral  taste,  which  we  should  blame  in 
Saint-Evremond  and  Voiture,  but  which  we  love  in 
La  Fontaine.  In  fact,  those  insipidities  and  that  false 
taste  cease  to  exist  from  the  moment  that  they  flow 
from  his  bewitching  pen.  La  Fontaine  needs  longer 
breath  and  more  consecutiveness  in  his  compositions; 
he  has,  as  he  goes  along,  frequent  distractions  which 
hamper  his  style  and  swerve  his  thought;  his  delicious 


i64  %a  fontatne. 

verses,  flowing  like  a  rivulet,  slumber  at  times,  or  they 
wander  away  and  lose  themselves;  but  that,  in  itself, 
constitutes  a  manner;  and  it  is  with  that  manner,  as 
with  those  of  all  men  of  genius, —  what  would  else- 
where seem  poor  and  even  bad,  in  them  becomes  a 
trait  of  character  or  a  piquant  grace. 

The  conversion  of  Mme.  de  La  Sabliere,  which  La 
Fontaine  had  not  the  courage  to  imitate,  left  him 
solitary  and  unoccupied.  He  continued  to  live  in  her 
house;  but  she  no  longer  received  the  company  of 
other  days,  and  she  absented  herself  frequently  to 
visit  the  poor  and  the  sick.  It  was  then,  more  es- 
pecially, that,  to  relieve  his  tedium,  he  gave  himself 
up  to  the  society  of  the  Prince  de  Conti  and  of  MM. 
de  Vendome,  whose  morals  we  all  know;  and  thus, 
without  losing  any  of  his  powers  of  mind,  he  ex- 
posed to  the  eyes  of  every  one  a  cynical  and  dissolute 
old  age,  ill-disguised  under  the  roses  of  Anacreon. 
Maucroix,  Racine,  and  his  true  friends  were  grieved 
at  such  licence  without  excuse;  the  austere  Boileau 
ceased  to  see  him.  Saint-Evremond,  who  tried  to 
attract  him  to  England  and  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Mazarin,  received  from  Ninon  a  letter  in  which  she 
said:  "1  have  heard  that  you  are  wishing  for  La  Fon- 
taine in  England;  here,  in  Paris,  people  enjoy  him  no 
longer;  his  head  is  much  weakened.  That  is  the  fate 
of  poets:  Tasso  and  Lucretius  met  with  it.  I  doubt 
if  there  is  any  philter  of  love  for  La  Fontaine;  he  has 
never  loved  women  who  could  pay  the  cost." 


Xa  jfontaine.  165 

La  Fontaine's  head  was  not  weakened  as  Ninon 
thought;  but  what  she  says  of  his  vile  loves  is  only  too 
true;  he  often  received  from  the  Abbe  de  Chaulieu 
gifts  of  money  of  which  he  made  a  melancholy  use. 
Fortunately,  a  rich  and  beautiful  young  woman,  Mme. 
d'Hervart,  attached  herself  to  the  poet,  offered  him 
the  attractions  of  her  hous?,  and  became  to  him,  by 
care  and  kind  attention,  a  second  La  Sabliere.  At  the 
death  of  the  latter,  she  took  the  old  man  to  her  home 
and  surrounded  him  with  friendship  to  his  last 
moments.  It  was  in  that  home  that  the  writer  of 
Joconde,  brought  at  last  to  repentance,  put  on  the 
sackcloth  and  ashes  he  never  again  put  off.  The  de- 
tails of  that  repentance  are  touching:  La  Fontaine 
consecrated  it  publicly  by  a  translation  of  the  Dies 
Irce,  which  he  read  before  the  Academy,  and  he 
formed  the  design  of  paraphrasing  the  Psalms  before 
he  died. 

But,  apart  from  the  chilling  of  old  age  and  sickness, 
we  may  doubt  if  that  task,  often  attempted  by  re- 
pentant poets,  would  have  been  possible  to  La  Fon- 
taine, or  to  any  one  else  in  those  days.  At  that  epoch 
of  ruling  and  traditional  beliefs,  it  was  the  senses,  not 
the  reason,  that  led  men  astray:  they  had  been 
licentious,  they  made  themselves  devout;  they  had 
passed  through  no  philosophical  pride  or  arid  impiety; 
they  did  not  linger  in  the  regions  of  doubt,  they  were 
not  made  to  feel  a  hundred  times  their  failure  in  the 
search  for  truth.     The  senses  charmed  the  soul  for 


i66  Xa  Fontaine. 

themselves,  for  their  own  sake,  and  not  as  a  be- 
wildering and  fiery  emotion,  not  from  ennui  or 
despair.  Then,  when  licence  and  errors  were  ex- 
hausted, and  men  returned  to  the  one  supreme  truth, 
they  found  a  haven  all  ready  for  them,  a  confessional, 
an  oratory,  a  hair-shirt  that  subdued  the  flesh;  they 
were  not,  as  in  our  day,  pursued  into  the  very  bosom 
of  reviving  faith  by  fearsome  doubts,  eternal  obscuri- 
ties, and  an  abyss  ever  yawning: — 1  am  wrong;  there 
was  one  man,  even  in  those  days,  who  experienced 
all  this  and  it  well-nigh  drove  him  mad:  that  man 
was  Pascal. 


VI. 

IPaecaL 


167 


VI. 

{Pascal. 

IN  writing  a  few  pages  upon  Pascal,  I  am  under  tiie 
disadvantage  of  having  formerly  written  a  large 
volume  (Histoire  de  Port- Royal)  of  which  he  was, 
almost  exclusively,  the  subject,  1  shall  endeavour,  in 
speaking  on  this  occasion  of  a  book  that  ranks  among 
our  classics,  to  forget  what  1  have  hitherto  written  of 
it  that  was  too  minute  for  my  present  purpose,  and 
limit  myself  here  to  what  is  likely  to  interest  the  gen- 
erality of  readers. 

Pascal  had  a  great  mind,  and  a  great  heart  —  which 
great  minds  do  not  always  have ;  and  all  that  he  has  done 
in  the  domain  of  mind  and  the  domain  of  heart  bears 
a  stamp  of  invention  and  of  originality  which  testifies 
to  strength,  profundity,  and  an  ardent,  even  rabid, 
pursuit  of  truth.  Born  in  1623,  of  a  family  full  of  in- 
telligence and  virtue,  brought  up  without  close  re- 
straint by  a  father  who  was  himself  a  superior  man, 
he  had  received  great  gifts  from  Nature ;  a  special  genius 
for  mathematical  calculations  and  concepts,  and  an 
exquisite  moral  sensibility  which  made  him  passionate 
for  good  and  against  evil,  eager  for  happiness,  but  a 
happiness  that  was  noble  and  everlasting.     His  dis- 

169 


17©  pascal. 

coveries  in  childhood  are  famous;  wherever  he  turned 
his  eyes  he  sought  and  found  something  new;  it  was 
easier  to  him  to  find  for  himself  than  to  study  from 
others.  His  youth  escaped  the  frivolities  and  licence 
which  are  its  usual  perils;  his  nature,  however,  was 
very  capable  of  storms;  he  had  them,  those  storms, 
and  he  spent  their  force  in  the  sphere  of  knowledge, 
but,  above  all,  in  that  of  religious  sentiment. 

His  excess  of  intellectual  toil  had  early  made  him 
subject  to  a  singular  nervous  malady,  which  still  fur- 
ther developed  a  naturally  keen  sensibility.  His  meet- 
ing with  the  gentlemen  of  Port-Royal  furnished  food 
for  his  moral  activity,  and  their  doctrine,  which  was 
something  new  and  bold,  became  to  him  a  point  of 
departure,  whence  he  sprang  forward  with  his  native 
originality  towards  a  complete  reconstruction  of  the 
moral  and  religious  world.  A  Christian,  sincere  and 
impassioned,  he  conceived  an  apology,  a  defence  of 
religion  by  a  method  and  by  reasons  that  no  one  had 
so  far  found,  but  which,  as  he  believed,  would  carry 
defeat  to  the  very  heart  of  unbelief.  At  thirty-five 
years  of  age  he  turned  to  this  work  with  the  fire  and 
precision  that  he  put  into  everything;  new  and  more 
serious  disorders  appearing  in  his  health  prevented  its 
steady  execution;  but  he  returned  to  it  in  every  inter- 
val of  his  sufferings;  and  he  cast  on  paper  his  ideas, 
his  perceptions,  his  inspirations.  Dying  at  thirty-eight 
years  of  age,  in  1662,  he  could  not  put  them  into 
order  as  a  whole,  and  his  Pens^es  sur  la  Religion  did 


BLAISE   PASCAL. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


pascal.  171 

not  appear  till  seven  or  eight  years  later,  under  the 
care  of  his  family  and  friends. 

What  was  that  first  edition  of  the  Pensees  ?  What 
must  it  have  been  ?  We  can  easily  conceive  it,  even 
if  the  original  manuscripts  were  not  in  existence  to 
show  it.  The  first  edition  did  not  contain  all  that 
Pascal  left;  only  the  principal  parts  were  given;  and 
of  those,  scruples  of  various  kinds,  either  of  doctrine 
or  of  grammar,  caused  corrections,  modifications,  ex- 
planations in  certain  places,  where  the  excitability  and 
impatience  of  the  author  were  shown  in  statements 
too  brusque,  or  too  concise,  or  in  a  decisive  manner, 
which  on  such  subjects  might  be  compromising. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  Voltaire  and  Condorcet 
seized  upon  some  of  Pascal's  Pensees  very  much  as 
in  war-time  generals  try  to  profit  by  the  premature 
advance  of  an  audacious  and  rash  enemy.  Pascal  was 
audacious  only,  he  was  not  rash;  but  since  I  have 
compared  him  to  a  general,  I  will  add  that  he  was 
a  general.  Killed  in  the  very  moment  of  his  enter- 
prise, it  was  left  unfinished,  and  in  part  unprotected. 

In  our  day,  by  restoring  Pascal's  true  text,  giving 
his  sentences  in  all  their  simplicity,  their  firm  and  pre- 
cise beauty,  their  boldness  in  challenging,  and  their 
familiarity,  which  is  sometimes  singular,  we  are 
brought  back  to  a  point  of  view  that  is  far  more 
just,  and  in  no  way  hostile.  M.  Cousin  was  the  first 
to  suggest  (in  1843)  the  work  of  completely  restoring 
Pascal;   M.  Fougere  has  the  merit  of  executing  it  in 


172  ipascal. 

1844.  Thanks  to  him,  we  now  have  Pascal's  Pensies 
in  precise  conformity  with  the  original  manuscripts. 
This  is  the  text  that  a  young  professor,  M.  Havet,  has 
just  published,  surrounding  it  with  much  necessary 
help  in  the  way  of  explanations,  comparisons,  and 
commentaries;  he  has  given  us  a  learned  edition,  truly 
classic,  in  the  best  acceptation  of  that  word. 

Being  unable,  in  this  essay,  to  enter  fully  into  an 
examination  of  Pascal's  method,  1  wish  merely  to  in- 
sist on  a  single  point,  and  show  how,  in  spite  of  all 
changes  that  have  come  about  in  the  world  and  in 
ideas,  in  spite  of  the  repugnance  that  is  more  and 
more  caused  by  certain  views  peculiar  to  the  author 
of  the  Pensees,  we  are  to-day  in  a  better  position  to 
sympathise  with  Pascal  than  they  were  in  the  days  of 
Voltaire;  that  which  shocked  Voltaire  shocks  us  much 
less  than  the  beautiful  and  heartfelt  parts,  which  are 
one  whole  side  of  him,  touch  and  transport  us. 

It  is  because  Pascal  is  not  merely  a  reasoner,  a  man 
who  presses  his  adversary  closely  from  every  direc- 
tion, who  flings  a  challenge  to  him  on  all  the  points 
that  are  commonly  the  pride  and  glory  of  the  under- 
standing; he  is  at  the  same  time  a  soul  that  suffers; 
he  has  felt,  and  he  expresses,  in  himself,  the  struggle 
and  the  agony. 

There  were  unbelievers  in  Pascal's  time;  the  six- 
teenth century  gave  birth  to  quite  a  number,  especially 
among  the  lettered  classes;  these  were  pagans,  more 
or  less  sceptical,  of  whom  Montaigne  is  for  us  the 


pascal.  173 

gracious  type,  and  we  see  the  race  continued  in  Char- 
ron,  La  Mothe  Le  Vayer,  and  Gabriel-Naude.  But  these 
men  of  doubt  and  erudition,  or  others,  the  mere  liber- 
tines of  wit  and  society,  such  as  Theophile  and  Des 
Barreaux,  took  things  little  to  heart.  Whether  they 
persevered  in  their  unbelief,  or  were  converted  in  the 
hour  of  death,  we  feel  in  none  of  them  that  deep  un- 
easiness that  marks  a  moral  nature  of  a  high  order, 
and  an  intellectual  nature  sealed  with  the  signet  of  the 
Archangel:  in  a  word,  and  to  speak  after  the  manner 
of  Plato,  they  are  not  royal  natures.  Pascal  is  of  that 
primal  and  glorious  race;  he  has  upon  his  heart  and 
on  his  brow  more  than  one  sign  of  it;  he  is  one  of  the 
noblest  of  mortals,  but  he  is  ill,  he  seeks  a  cure.  He 
was  the  first  to  bring  to  the  defence  of  religion  the 
ardour,  the  anguish,  the  lofty  melancholy  that  others 
have  since  carried  into  scepticism. 

"I  blame  equally,"  he  says,  "those  who  take  the 
side  of  praising  man,  those  who  take  the  other  side  of 
condemning  him,  and  those  who  merely  divert  them- 
selves; I  can  approve  of  those  only  who  seek  with 
groans." 

The  method  he  employs  in  his  Pensees  to  combat 
unbelief,  and,  above  all,  to  stir  the  indifferent  and  put 
desire  into  their  hearts,  is  full  of  originality  and  unex- 
pectedness. We  know  how  he  starts.  He  takes  man 
in  the  midst  of  nature,  in  the  bosom  of  the  infinite; 
he  considers  him,  by  turns,  in  his  relation  to  the  im- 
mensity of  the  heavens  and  in  his  relation  to  atoms; 


174  pascal. 

he  shows  him  alternately  grand  and  petty,  suspended 
between  two  infinities,  two  abysses.  The  French 
language  has  no  finer  pages  than  the  simple  and  se- 
vere lines  of  that  incomparable  picture.  Then,  fol- 
lowing man  within  himself,  as  he  has  followed  him 
without,  he  strives  to  show  that  in  the  soul  are  two 
abysses,  one  straining  upward  towards  God,  towards 
a  noble  morality,  a  movement  of  return  to  man's  illus- 
trious origin;  on  the  other  a  descent,  an  abasement 
towards  evil,  a  sort  of  criminal  attraction  towards 
vice.  That  is,  undoubtedly,  the  Christian  idea  of 
original  corruption  and  the  Fall;  but  by  the  manner 
in  which  Pascal  lays  hold  of  it  he  makes  it  his  own 
in  a  way,  so  far  and  so  hard  does  he  drive  it  to  a 
conclusion:  he  makes  man  in  the  beginning  a  mon- 
ster, a  chimera,  something  incomprehensible;  he 
forms  the  knot  and  ties  it  indissolubly,  in  order  that 
God  alone,  descending  upon  it  like  a  sword,  can 
cut  it. 

To  vary  my  reading  of  Pascal,  I  have  given  myself 
the  satisfaction  of  re-reading,  side  by  side,  certain 
pages  of  Bossuet  and  Fenelon.  1  took  Fenelon  in  his 
treatise  on  the  Existence  de  Dieu,  and  Bossuet  in  his 
treatise  on  the  Connaissance  de  Dieu  et  de  Soi-metne  ; 
and  without  seeking  to  fathom  the  difference  (if  there 
be  any)  in  doctrine,  1  have  felt,  more  especially,  the 
difference  in  their  value  and  their  genius. 

Fenelon,  as  we  know,  begins  by  obtaining  his 
proofs  of  the  existence  of  God  from  the  general  aspect 


IPascaU  175 

of  the  universe,  from  the  spectacle  of  the  wonders 
that  start  forth  in  all  orders  —  the  stars,  the  various 
elements,  the  structure  of  the  human  body;  all  are 
to  him  a  path  by  which  to  rise  to  the  contemplation 
of  the  work,  and  to  admiration  of  the  art  and  know- 
ledge of  the  workman.  There  is  a  plan,  there  are 
laws,  therefore  there  must  be  an  architect  and  a  legis- 
lator. There  are  defined  purposes,  therefore  there 
must  be  a  supreme  intention.  After  accepting  with 
confidence  this  method  of  interpretation  by  external 
things,  and  the  demonstration  of  God  by  Nature, 
Fenelon,  in  the  second  part  of  his  treatise,  takes  up 
another  class  of  proofs;  he  admits  philosophic  doubts 
on  things  external,  and  turns  inward  to  man's  self, 
reaching  the  same  end  by  another  road,  and  demon- 
strating God  by  the  very  nature  of  our  ideas.  But, 
while  admitting  the  universal  doubt  of  philosophers, 
he  is  not  alarmed  by  the  state  of  things;  he  describes 
it  slowly,  almost  kindly;  he  is  neither  hurried,  nor 
impatient,  nor  distressed,  like  Pascal;  he  is  not  what 
Pascal  in  his  researches  seems  to  us  at  first  sight  to 
be  —  a  bewildered  traveller  longing  for  shelter,  who, 
lost  without  a  guide  in  a  dark  forest,  takes  many  a 
wrong  path,  returns  upon  his  steps  discouraged,  sits 
down  at  a  cros?ways  in  the  forest,  utters  cries  that  no 
one  answers,  starts  again  in  grief  and  frenzy,  and, 
still  lost,  flings  himself  to  earth,  wanting  to  die,  and 
attains  his  goal  at  last  through  terror  and  bloody 
sweat. 


176  pascal. 

Fenelon  has  nothing  of  all  this  in  his  easy,  gradual, 
circumspect  advance.  It  is  very  true  that  at  the  mo- 
ment when  he  asks  himself  whether  all  Nature  is  not 
a  phantom,  an  illusion  of  the  senses,  and  when,  to  be 
logical,  he  assumes  this  supposition  of  absolute  doubt 
—  it  is  very  true  that  he  says  to  himself:  "  This  state 
of  suspension  surprises  and  alarms  me;  it  casts  me 
into  my  inward  self,  into  a  deep  solitude  that  is  full  of 
horror;  it  impedes  me,  it  holds  me,  as  it  were,  in  air; 
it  cannot  last,  I  know  that;  but  it  is  the  only  reason- 
able state." 

At  the  moment  when  he  says  that,  we  feel  very 
plainly,  by  the  manner  in  which  he  speaks  and  his 
levity  of  expression,  that  he  is  not  seriously  alarmed. 
A  little  farther  on,  addressing  reason  and  apostro- 
phising it,  he  asks  it:  "How  long  shall  I  remain  in 
this  doubt,  which  is  a  species  of  torture,  and  yet  is 
the  only  use  I  can  make  of  reason  ? "  This  doubt, 
which  is  a  "species  of  torture"  for  Fenelon,  is  never 
admitted  as  a  gratuitous  supposition  by  Pascal;  it  is 
its  reality  that  seems  to  him  cruel  torture,  the  most 
revolting  and  intolerable  to  Nature  itself.  Fenelon,  in 
putting  himself  into  this  state  of  doubt  under  the 
example  of  Descartes,  makes  sure  previously  of  his 
own  existence  and  the  certainty  of  several  primary 
ideas.  He  continues  in  this  path  of  broad,  agreeable, 
and  easy  deduction,  mingled  here  and  there  with  little 
gusts  of  affection,  but  without  storms.  We  feel,  as 
we  read  him,  an  airy,  angelic  nature,  which  has  only 


IPascal.  177 

to  let  itseli  go,  and  it  will  rise  of  itself  to  its  celestial 
origin.  The  whole  is  crowned  by  a  prayer  addressed 
to  a  God  who  is,  above  all  else,  infinite  and  kind;  a 
God  to  whom  he  abandons  himself  with  confidence, 
even  if  at  times  his  words  deny  it:  "Pardon  my 
errors,  O  Kindness,  that  is  not  less  infinite  than  all 
the  other  perfections  of  my  God;  pardon  the  stam- 
merings of  a  tongue  which  cannot  abstain  from  laud- 
ing thee,  and  the  failures  of  a  mind  that  thou  hast 
made  to  admire  thy  perfection." 

Nothing  can  be  less  like  Pascal's  method  than  this 
smooth  and  easy  way.  Nowhere  do  we  hear  the 
cry  of  distress;  Fenelon,  in  adoring  the  Cross,  never 
clings  to  it,  like  Pascal,  as  to  a  mast  in  shipwreck, 

Pascal,  in  the  first  place,  begins  by  rejecting  all 
proofs  drawn  from  Nature  of  the  existence  of  God :  "1 
admire,"  he  says  ironically,  "the  boldness  with  which 
these  persons  undertake  to  speak  of  God,  addressing 
their  discourse  to  unbelievers.  Their  first  chapter  is 
to  prove  Divinity  by  the  works  of  Nature."  Continu- 
ing to  develop  his  thought,  he  insists  that  such  dis- 
course, tending  to  demonstrate  God  from  natural 
works,  can  have  their  true  effect  only  on  the  faithful, 
and  on  those  who  already  worship  him.  As  for  the 
others,  the  indifferent,  and  those  who  are  destitute  of 
living  faith  and  grace, 

"  to  say  to  these  that  they  have  only  to  look  at  the  least  things  that 

surround  them  and  they  will  see  God  plainly,  and  to  point  them,  for 

all  proof  on  this  great  and  important  subject,  to  the  course  of  the 
VOL.  n. — 12. 


178  ipascal. 

moon  or  the  planets  is  to  give  them  good  reason  to  think  that  the 
proofs  of  our  religion  are  very  weak;  and  I  see,  by  reason  and  from 
experience,  that  nothing  is  more  fitted  to  give  birth  to  contempt." 

We  can  judge  clearly  from  that  passage  to  what 
point  Pascal  neglected  and  even  rejected  with  disdain 
all  semi-proof;  and  yet  in  this  he  shows  himself 
more  critical  than  Scripture,  which  says  in  a  cele- 
brated psalm,  Coeli  enarrant  gloriam  Dei:  "The 
heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament 
showeth  his  handiwork."  It  is  curious  to  notice  that 
Pascal's  rather  contemptuous  sentence:  "1  admire 
the  boldness  with  which,"  etc.,  was  printed  in  the  first 
edition  of  his  Pensees,  and  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale 
possesses  a  unique  copy,  dated  1669,  in  which 
the  sentence  appears  verbatim.  But  presently  friends, 
or  the  examiners  and  censors  of  the  book,  alarmed  at 
so  exclusive  a  proceeding,  which  was  actually  in  con- 
tradiction to  Holy  Scripture,  cancelled  that  passage 
before  the  book  was  offered  for  sale;  they  softened 
the  language,  and  presented  Pascal's  idea  with  a  pre- 
caution that  that  vigorous  writer  never  took,  even 
with  regard  to  his  friends  and  auxiliaries.  The  only 
point  on  which  I  desire  to  insist  here,  is  the  open  op- 
position of  Pascal  to  what  was  soon  to  be  Fenelon's 
method.  Fenelon,  serene,  confident,  and  without 
anxiety,  beholds  the  wonderful  system  of  the  starry 
night,  and  says  with  the  Magi,  or  the  Prophet,  or  the 
Chaldean  shepherd:  "How  almighty  and  wise  must 
he  be  who  made  worlds  as  innumerable  as  the  sands 


pascal.  179 

on  the  seashore,  and  who  leads  throughout  the  ages 
those  wandering  worlds  as  a  shepherd  his  flock!" 
Pascal  considers  the  same  brilliant  night,  he  feels  be- 
yond it  a  void  that  the  geometrician  cannot  fill,  and  he 
cries  out:  "The  eternal  silence  of  that  infinite  space 
terrifies  me."  Like  a  wounded  eagle  he  flies  from 
the  sun,  and  seeks,  without  attaining,  a  new  and  eter- 
nal dawn.  His  plaint  and  his  terror  come  of  finding 
nought  but  silence  and  night. 

With  Bossuet  the  contrast  of  method  is  not  so 
striking.  Even  if,  in  his  treatise  on  Le  Connaissance 
de  Dieu,  the  great  prelate  were  not  addressing  his 
pupil,  the  young  dauphin,  if  he  spoke  to  any  reader 
whatever,  he  would  not  write  otherwise  than  as  he 
does.  Bossuet  takes  the  pen,  and  states  with  lofty 
tranquillity  the  points  of  doctrine  —  the  dual  nature  of 
man,  his  noble  origin,  the  excellence  and  the  immor- 
tality of  the  spiritual  principle  within  him,  his  direct 
linking  with  God.  Bossuet  lectures  like  a  truly  great 
bishop,  seated  in  his  pulpit  and  leaning  on  it.  He  is 
not  an  anxious,  sorrowful  soul  in  search  of  some- 
thing; he  is  a  master,  indicating  and  warranting  the 
way.  He  demonstrates  and  develops  the  whole  line 
of  his  discourse  and  conception  without  contest  or 
effort.  He  makes  no  struggle  to  prove;  in  a  way,  he 
only  recognises  and  promulgates  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  like  a  man  convinced  who  has  not  fought  in- 
ward battles  for  a  length  of  time;  he  speaks  as  a  man 
of  all  authorities  and  all  stabilities,  who  takes  pleasure 


i8o  pascal. 

in  beholding  order  everywhere,  or  in  re-establishing 
it  instantly,  by  his  speech.  Pascal  insists  on  the  dis- 
cord and  disorder  inherent,  as  he  thinks,  in  all  nature. 
Where  the  one  extends  and  develops  the  august  ad- 
vance of  his  instruction,  the  other  exhibits  his  wounds 
and  his  blood;  but  in  all  that  Pascal  has  which  is  over- 
strained and  excessive,  he  is  like  ourselves,  and  he 
touches  us. 

Not  that  Pascal  puts  himself  completely  on  a  par 
with  those  he  reclaims  and  directs.  Without  being 
either  bishop  or  priest,  he  is  sure  of  his  fact,  he  knows 
his  object,  he  lets  us  see,  plainly  enough,  his  cer- 
tainty, his  scorn,  his  impatience;  he  chides,  he  jeers, 
he  handles  roughly  whoso  resists  or  does  not  under- 
stand him;  then,  all  of  a  sudden,  charity  or  natural 
frankness  gets  the  better  of  him;  his  despotic  airs 
cease;  he  speaks  in  his  own  name,  and  in  the  name 
of  all;  he  associates  himself  with  the  soul  in  trouble, 
making  it  his  living  image  and  ours  also. 

Bossuet  does  not  reject  the  light  or  the  help  of  an- 
cient philosophy;  he  never  insults  it;  according  to 
him,  all  that  moves  onward  to  the  idea  of  the  intellec- 
tual and  spiritual  life,  all  that  aids  the  exercise  and 
development  of  that  higher  portion  of  ourselves  by 
which  we  are  allied  to  the  Supreme  Being  —  all  is 
good;  and  every  time  our  "illustrious  truth"  is  made 
apparent  to  us,  we  gain  a  foretaste  of  that  higher 
existence  to  which  the  reasoning  human  creature  is 
predestined.     Bossuet,  in  his  magnificent  language. 


Ipascal.  i8i 

loves  to  associate  himself,  to  unite  himself  with  great 
names;  to  link,  as  it  were,  a  golden  chain  by  which 
the  human  understanding  can  attain  to  the  highest 
summits.  I  must  quote  one  passage  of  sovereign 
beauty : 

"  He  who  beholds  Pythagoras  transported  at  having  found  the 
squares  of  the  sides  of  a  certain  triangle  with  the  square  of  its  base, 
and  sacrificing  a  hecatomb  in  thank-offerings;  —  he  who  beholds 
Archimedes,  watchful  of  every  new  discovery,  forgetting  to  eat  or 
drink;  —  he  who  sees  Plato  extolling  the  happiness  of  those  who  con- 
template the  good  and  the  beautiful,  first  in  the  arts,  then  in  nature, 
and  lastly  in  their  source  and  essence,  which  is  God;  —  he  who  sees 
Aristotle  lauding  those  happy  moments  when  the  soul  is  possessed 
solely  by  the  perception  of  Truth,  judging  such  life  to  be  the  only  one 
worthy  to  be  eternal,  the  life  of  God; — but  (above  all)  he  who  sees  all 
saintly  persons  so  transported  with  this  divine  exercise  of  knowing, 
praising,  and  loving  God  that  they  never  quit  it,  and,  in  order  to  con- 
tinue it,  extinguish  throughout  the  whole  course  of  their  lives  every 
sensual  desire; — whoso,  1  say,  sees  all  these  things,  recognizes  in  their 
intellectual  operations  the  principle  and  the  exercise  of  the  blessed 
eternal  life." 

That  which  carries  Bossuet  to  God  is  the  principle 
of  human  grandeur  rather  than  the  sentiment  of 
man's  misery.  His  contemplation  rises  gradually 
from  truth  to  truth,  it  does  not  bend  incessantly 
over  each  abyss.  In  the  above  words  he  has  painted 
for  us  a  spiritual  enjoyment  of  the  first  order,  which, 
beginning  with  Pythagoras  and  Archimedes,  and 
passing  Aristotle,  rises  to  the  saints  on  earth;  he, 
himself,  viewing  him  in  this  example,  seems  only  to 
have  mounted  one  step  more  to  the  altar. 

Pascal  never  proceeds  thus.     He  holds  to  marking 


1 82  ipascal. 

distinctly,  in  an  insuperable  manner,  the  differences 
of  tiie  spheres.  He  refuses  to  see  what  there  was  of 
gradual  advancement  towards  Christianity  in  the 
ancient  philosophies.  The  learned  and  reasonable 
d'Aquesseau  said,  in  the  plan  of  a  work  he  proposed 
to  make  from  the  Pensees:  "If  any  one  should  under- 
take to  make  actual  use  of  the  Pensees  of  M.  Pascal, 
he  would  have  to  rectify  in  many  places  the  imperfect 
ideas  he  gives  of  pagan  philosophy;  true  religion 
does  not  need  to  attribute  to  its  adversaries  or  its 
rivals  defects  they  have  not."  Brought  into  compari- 
son with  Bossuet,  Pascal  may  at  first  sight  show  a 
harshness  and  narrowness  of  doctrine  that  shock  us. 
Not  content  to  believe  with  Bossuet  and  Fenelon,  and 
all  other  Christians,  in  an  unseen  God,  he  wants  to 
insist  on  the  mysterious  nature  of  that  obscurity;  he 
takes  pleasure  in  expressly  declaring  that  God  "has 
chosen  to  blind  some  and  enlighten  others."  At  times 
he  "obstinately  strikes"  (I  use  his  own  words)  on 
rocks  which  it  would  be  much  wiser,  from  reason  and 
even  from  faith,  to  go  round,  rather  than  discover  and 
denounce  them.  He  says,  for  example,  of  the  prophe- 
cies quoted  in  the  Gospels:  "You  believe  they  are 
quoted  to  make  you  believe — No,  it  is  to  prevent  you 
from  believing."  He  says  of  miracles:  "Miracles  do 
not  serve  to  convert,  but  to  condemn."  Like  a  too 
intrepid  guide  in  mountain  climbing,  he  skirts  inten- 
tionally the  precipices  and  crevasses;  one  would  think 
he  was  braving  vertigo. 


Ipascal.  183 

Pascal,  unlike  Bossuet,  has  an  affection  for  small 
churches,  little  flocks  of  the  elect,  which  leads  in  the 
end  to  sect.  "1  like,"  he  says,  "worshippers  un- 
known to  every  one  and  to  the  Prophets  themselves." 
But,  beside  and  through  the  hard  asperities  of  his 
way,  what  piercing  words!  what  cries  that  move  us! 
what  truths  felt  by  all  who  suffer,  all  who  desire,  all 
who  have  lost  and  then  refound  the  way,  never  will- 
ing to  despair  of  it!  "It  is  good,"  he  cries,  "to  be 
tired  and  weary  from  the  fruitless  search  for  the  true 
good,  for  then  we  stretch  out  our  arms  to  the  Libera- 
tor." No  one  has  ever  made  it  better  felt  than  Pascal 
what  faith  is,  perfect  faith,  "  God  felt  in  the  heart,  and 
not  by  reason."  "What  distance  there  is,"  he  says, 
"between  the  knowledge  of  God  and  loving  him!" 

This  affectionate  side  of  Pascal,  in  breaking  through 
what  is  sour  and  stern  in  his  doctrine  and  methods, 
has  all  the  more  charm  and  empire.  The  emotional 
manner  in  which  that  great,  suffering,  and  praying 
spirit  speaks  to  us  of  what  is  most  private  in  religion, 
of  Jesus  Christ  in  person,  is  fitted  to  win  all  hearts,  to 
inspire  them  with  deep,  mysterious  feeling,  and  im- 
press upon  them  for  ever  a  tender  respect.  We  may 
remain  sceptical  after  reading  Pascal,  but  we  find  it 
not  permissible  to  jest  or  to  blaspheme;  and,  in  that 
sense,  it  is  true  that  he  has  vanquished,  on  one  whole 
side,  the  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  of  Vol- 
taire. 

In  a  fragment,  lately  published  for  the  first  time. 


1 84  pascal. 

Pascal  meditates  on  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ;  on  the 
tortures  which  that  soul,  absolutely  heroic  and  firm 
when  it  chooses  to  be  so,  inflicted  on  itself  in  the 
name  and  for  the  sake  of  all  men;  and  in  these  few 
verses,  alternately  of  meditation  and  of  prayer,  Pascal 
penetrates  into  the  mystery  of  Christ's  suffering  with 
a  passion,  a  tenderness,  a  piety  to  which  no  human 
soul  can  remain  insensible.  He  supposes  a  dialogue, 
in  which  the  divine  Sufferer  says  to  his  disciple: 

"  'Console  thyself;  thou  wouldst  not  seek  me  if  thou  hadst  not 
found; — thou  wouldst  not  seek  me  if  thou  didst  not  possess  me; 
therefore,  be  not  anxious. 

"  '  I  think  of  thee  in  my  agony;  I  have  shed  my  blood  for  thee. 
Wilt  thou  that  the  blood  of  my  humanity  be  for  ever  shed  whilst  thou 
givest  me  no  tears  ? '  " 

This  writing  should  be  read  as  a  whole  and  in  its 
place.  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  could  not  have  heard 
it,  I  venture  to  believe,  without  breaking  into  sobs, 
and,  perhaps,  falling  on  his  knees.  It  is  by  such 
pages,  burning,  passionate,  in  which  the  love  divine 
is  instinct  with  human  charity,  that  Pascal  has  more 
hold  upon  us  to-day  than  any  writer  of  his  time.  In 
this  trouble,  this  passion,  this  ardour,  there  is  some- 
thing that  redeems  his  harshness  and  his  extrava- 
gances of  doctrine.  Pascal  is  for  us  more  violent  than 
Bossuet,  but  more  sympathetic;  he  is  more  our  con- 
temporary in  feeling.  We  can  read  him  on  the  same  day 
that  we  read  "Childe  Harold  "  or  "  Hamlet,"  "Rene" 
or  ' '  Werther, "  and  he  holds  his  own  against  them ;  or, 
rather,  he  makes  us  comprehend   and   feel   a   moral 


IPascaL  185 

ideal  and  a  beauty  of  heart  that  is  lacking  in  all  of 
them,  and  which,  once  perceived,  is  the  despair  of 
others.  It  is  an  honour  to  mankind  to  have  despairs 
that  come  of  such  high  objects. 

Some  searchers  and  erudites  will  continue  to  study 
Pascal;  but  the  conclusion  that  to-day  seems  good 
and  useful  for  simply  serious  minds  and  upright  hearts, 
the  counsel  that  I  give  them  after  a  fresh  reading  of 
the  Pensees  in  this  last  edition  is  not  to  attempt  to 
penetrate  too  deeply  into  the  personal  and  Jansenist 
Pascal;  to  be  satisfied  with  divining  him  on  that  side 
and  understanding  him  on  certain  essential  points,  and 
to  limit  themselves  to  the  sight  of  the  moral  struggle, 
the  storm  and  stress  of  that  passion  which  he  felt  for 
Good,  and  for  deserved  happiness.  Taking  him  thus, 
we  can  sufficiently  resist  his  rather  narrow,  stubborn, 
and  arbitrary  logic;  but  our  souls  will  open  to  that 
flame,  that  upward  soaring,  and  to  all  else  that  is  so 
tender  and  so  generous  in  him ;  we  shall  grasp  without 
difficulty  the  ideal  of  moral  perfection  which  he  em- 
bodies in  Jesus  Christ;  we  shall  feel  ourselves  lifted 
up  and  purified  in  the  hours  we  spend  tete-a-tete 
with  this  athlete,  this  martyr,  this  hero  of  the  invisi- 
ble moral  world  —  Pascal  for  us  is  all  that. 

The  world  goes  on:  it  develops  more  and  more  in 
ways  that  seem  the  most  opposed  to  those  of  Pascal; 
in  the  ways  of  practical  self-interests,  of  physical  na- 
ture trained  and  subdued,  and  of  human  triumphs 
through   industry.     It  is  well  to  find  somewhere  a 


i86  ipascal. 

counterpoise;  well  that  in  some  solitary  chambers  firm 
minds,  generous,  not  bitter,  and  not  assuming  to  pro- 
test against  the  movement  of  the  age,  should  tell 
themselves  what  that  age  lacks,  and  in  what  way  it 
might  perfect  and  crown  itself.  Such  reservoirs  of 
high  thoughts  are  necessary,  that  the  habit  of  them  be 
not  wholly  lost,  and  that  the  positive,  the  practical, 
may  not  consume  the  whole  man.  Human  society, 
and,  to  take  the  clearest  example,  French  society,  seems 
to  me  sometimes  like  an  indefatigable  traveller,  who 
takes  his  way  and  follows  it  under  more  than  one  cos- 
tume, changing  his  name  and  coat  repeatedly.  Since 
'89  we  stand  on  our  feet  and  we  walk:  whither.^  who 
can  say  ?  but  on  we  go,  ceaselessly.  Revolution,  at 
the  moment  when,  under  one  form,  we  thought  it 
stopped,  rises  and  appears  under  another:  sometimes 
it  wears  the  military  uniform,  sometimes  the  black 
coat  of  the  deputy;  yesterday  it  was  the  proletary, 
the  day  before  it  was  the  bourgeois.  To-day  it  is  in- 
dustrial before  all  else;  the  engineer  is  he  who  has  the 
right  of  way  and  who  triumphs.  Let  us  not  com- 
plain, but,  at  the  same  time,  let  us  remember  that 
other  part  of  ourselves,  that  part  which  was  so  long 
the  most  precious  honour  of  humanity.  Let  us  go  to 
London,  and  visit  and  admire  the  Crystal  Palace  and 
its  marvels;  let  us  enrich  it  and  add  to  its  pride  with 
our  products  —  yes,  but  on  the  way,  on  our  return,  let 
us  repeat  these  words,  which  should  be  carved  upon 
its  frontal : 


B>a9cal.  187 

"  All  bodies,  the  firmament,  the  stars,  the  earth  and  its  kingdoms, 
are  not  equal  in  value  to  the  lowest  human  mind;  for  that  knows  all 
things  and  itself,  too;  but  the  bodies  know  nothing.  All  bodies 
together,  and  all  minds  together,  and  all  their  productions  are  not  equal 
in  value  to  the  smallest  impulse  of  charity:  that  is  of  an  order  infinitely 
higher. 

"  From  all  bodies  put  together  not  the  slightest  little  thought  can  be 
obtained;  that  is  impossible,  and  is  of  another  order.  Of  all  bodies 
and  minds  not  a  single  impulse  of  true  charity  can  be  obtained;  that, 
too,  is  impossible,  it  is  of  another  order,  the  supernatural." 

It  is  thus  that  Pascal  expresses  himself  in  his  brief, 
curt  Pensees,  written  for  himself  only,  rather  abrupt, 
and  issuing  with  a  gush,  as  it  were,  from  the  living 
spring. 


VII. 

flDabame  be  Sevigne. 


189 


VII. 

THOSE  critics,  and  especially  foreign  critics, 
who,  in  these  latter  days,  have  judged  our 
two  literary  centuries  with  severity,  agree  in 
recognising  their  ruling  qualities,  qualities  that  were 
reflected  by  them  in  a  thousand  ways,  which  gave 
them  their  brilliancy  and  distinction,  namely:  the 
spirit  of  conversation  and  of  society,  knowledge  of 
the  world  and  of  men,  a  quick,  acute  sense  of  proprie- 
ties and  absurdities,  subtile  delicacy  of  sentiment, 
grace,  piquancy,  and  a  perfected  politeness  of  lan- 
guage. And,  in  truth,  it  is  there — with  the  reserves 
that  we  all  make,  and  two  or  three  names,  like  those 
of  Bossuet  and  Montesquieu,  understood — it  is  there 
that,  until  about  the  year  1789,  the  distinctive  charac- 
teristics, the  signal  traits  of  French  literature,  among 
the  other  literatures  of  Europe,  will  be  found.  That 
glory,  which  has  been  made  almost  a  reproach  to  our 
nation,  is  fruitful  and  beautiful  enough  for  whoso 
knows  how  to  understand  and  interpret  it. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  our 
civilisation,  and  consequently  our  language  and  our 
literature,  had  nothing  mature,  nothing  fixed.    Europe, 

191 


192  /IDaC)ame  ^c  Sevione. 

issuing  from  the  religious  troubles  and  passing  through 
the  phases  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  was  laboriously 
giving  birth  to  a  new  political  system;  France,  within 
her  borders,  was  working  off  the  remains  of  her  civil 
discords.  At  Court,  a  few  salons,  a  few  ruelles  [al- 
coves '  ]  of  wits  and  beaux-esprits  were  already  in 
vogue;  but  nothing  was  yet  born  of  them  that  was 
great  or  original;  people  were  fed  to  satiety  on  Span- 
ish novels  and  the  sonnets  and  pastorals  of  Italy.  It 
was  not  until  after  Richelieu,  after  the  Fronde,  under 
the  queen-mother  and  Mazarin,  that  suddenly,  amid  the 
fetes  of  Saint-Mande  and  Vaux,  from  the  salon  of 
the  hotel  de  Rambouillet  or  the  antechambers  of  the 
young  king,  there  issued,  as  if  by  miracle,  three 
choice  minds,  three  geniuses  diversely  endowed,  but 
all  three  of  pure  and  naive  taste,  perfect  simplicity, 
easy  productiveness,  fed  by  their  own  native  graces 
and  delicacies,  and  destined  to  open  a  brilliant  era  of 
glory,  in  which  none  have  surpassed  them. 

Moliere,  La  Fontaine,  and  Mme.  de  Sevigne  belong 
to  a  literary  generation  which  preceded  that  of  which 
Racine  and  Boileau  were  the  leaders,  and  they  are  dis- 
tinguished from  the  latter  by  various  traits,  derived 
from  the  nature  of  their  genius  and  the  date  of 
their  coming.  We  feel,  from  the  turn  of  their  minds 
as  much  as  by  their  circumstances,  that  they  are  nearer 

'  Social  life  went  on  chiefly  in  dark,  half-furnished  bedrooms,  until 
Mme.  de  Rambouillet  instituted  her  famous  blue  salon;  hence  the  use 
of  the  word  ruelles,  applied  to  social  meetings. — Tr. 


MADAME  DE  SEVIQNE. 


/TOaDame  C)e  Sevlgne.  193 

to  the  France  that  preceded  Louis  XIV,  to  the  old 
French  language  and  spirit;  more  commingled  in 
them,  so  to  speak,  by  education  and  study;  and  that 
if  they  are  less  appreciated  by  foreigners  than  certain 
later  writers,  they  owe  it  to  what  is  precisely  more 
inward,  more  undefmable,  more  charming  for  French- 
men in  their  tone  and  manner.  So  that  if  to-day  we 
attempt  (and  with  reason)  to  revise  or  call  in  question 
many  judgments  delivered,  twenty  years  ago,  by 
scholastic  professors;  if  we  declare  war  pitilessly 
against  a  number  of  exaggerated  fames,  we  cannot, 
on  the  other  hand,  venerate  too  much  and  uphold  too 
firmly  these  immortal  writers,  who  were  the  first  to 
give  to  French  literature  its  original  character,  and  to 
secure  for  it  to  this  day  its  unique  place  among  the 
literatures  of  other  nations.  Moliere  drew  from  the 
spectacle  of  life,  from  the  living  play  of  human  eccen- 
tricities, vices,  and  absurdities,  all  that  we  can  conceive 
of  strongest  and  highest  in  poesy.  La  Fontaine  and 
Mme.  de  Sevigne,  on  a  less  wide  stage,  had  so  delicate 
and  true  a  sense  of  the  things  and  the  life  of  their 
time, —  La  Fontaine  nearer  to  nature,  Mme.  de  Sevigne 
to  society, —  and  this  exquisite  sense  they  have  ex- 
pressed so  vividly  in  their  writings,  that  they  find 
themselves  placed,  without  effort,  beside,  and  very 
little  below,  their  illustrious  contemporary. 

It  is  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne  only  that  I  have  now  to 
speak.  It  seems  as  if  all  had  been  said  about  her; 
certainly  the  details  are  nearly  exhausted;  but  I  believe 

VOL.   II. 13. 


194  /[Da&ame  Oe  Seplgne. 

that  she  has  been  until  now  regarded  too  much  as 
isolated,  which  was  long  the  case  with  La  Fontaine, 
to  whom  she  bears  much  resemblance.  To-day, 
when  the  society  of  which  she  represents  the  most 
brilliant  aspect  in  receding  from  us  becomes  more  dis- 
tinctly defined  to  our  eyes  as  a  whole,  it  is  easier, 
and  at  the  same  time  more  necessary,  to  assign  to 
Mme.  de  Sevigne  her  rank,  her  importance,  and  her 
affinities.  Doubtless  it  is  through  not  making  these 
remarks,  and  not  allowing  for  difference  of  periods, 
that  several  distinguished  minds  in  our  day  seem  in- 
clined to  judge  with  as  much  levity  as  rigour  one  of 
the  most  delightful  geniuses  that  ever  existed.  I  shall 
be  glad  if  this  article  can  help  in  removing  some  of 
those  unjust  prejudices. 

The  excesses  of  the  Regency  have  been  greatly 
stigmatised;  but  before  the  regency  of  Philippe  d'Or- 
leans  there  was  another,  not  less  dissolute,  not  less 
licentious,  and  more  atrocious  from  the  cruelty  that 
mingled  in  it — a  species  of  hideous  transition  between 
the  debauchery  of  Henri  III  and  that  of  Louis  XV.  The 
bad  morals  of  the  League,  which  lay  low  under  Henri 
IV  and  Richelieu,  revived,  being  no  longer  repressed. 
Debauchery  became  as  monstrous  as  it  had  been  in 
the  days  of  the  mignons,  and  as  it  was  later  in  the 
days  of  the  roues;  but  that  which  brought  this  period 
nearer  to  the  sixteenth  century  and  distinguished  it 
from  the  eighteenth  was,  especially,  assassinations, 
poisonings  (Italian  habits  due  to  the  Medici),  and  a 


flDa^ame  t>c  Sevigne.  195 

frenzy  for  duels,  inherited  from  tiie  civil  wars.  Such 
appears,  to  the  impartial  reader,  the  regency  of  Anne 
of  Austria;  such  was  the  dark  and  bloody  background 
upon  which  appeared,  one  fine  morning,  the  Fronde, 
which  people  have  agreed  to  call  "a  jest  of  mailed 
hands."  The  conduct  of  the  women  of  those  times, 
the  women  most  distinguished  for  birth,  beauty,  and 
intelligence,  seems  fabulous;  we  need  to  believe  that 
historians  have  calumniated  them.  But,  as  excess 
leads  always  to  its  opposite,  the  little  band  of  those 
who  escaped  corruption  flung  themselves  into  senti- 
mental metaphysics,  and  became  precieuses ;  hence 
the  hotel  de  Rambouillet.  Here  was  the  haven,  the 
asylum  of  good  morals,  in  the  midst  of  the  highest 
society.  As  for  good  taste,  it  found  its  place  there,  in 
the  end,  inasmuch  as  Mme.  de  Sevigne  was  of  it. 

Mile.  Marie  de  Rabutin-Chantal,  born  in  1626,  was 
the  daughter  of  the  Baron  de  Chantal,  a  frantic  duel- 
list, who,  on  an  Easter  Sunday,  left  the  holy  table  to 
serve  as  second  to  the  famous  Comte  de  Bouteville, 
Brought  up  by  her  uncle,  the  good  Abbe  de  Coulanges, 
she  received  early  in  life  a  solid  education,  and  was 
taught,  under  Chapelain  and  Menage,  Latin,  Italian, 
and  Spanish.  When  eighteen  years  of  age  she  mar- 
ried the  Marquis  de  Sevigne,  a  man  little  worthy  of 
her,  who,  after  greatly  neglecting  her,  was  killed  in  a 
duel  in  165 1.  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  freed  at  that  age,  and 
left  with  a  son  and  daughter,  never  thought  of  remar- 
rying.    She  loved  her  children  to  excess,  especially 


196  /!Da&ame  &e  Sevione. 

her  daughter;  all  other  passions  were  unknown  to 
her.  She  was,  personally,  a  smiling  blonde,  not  at  all 
sensual,  very  gay  and  frolicsome;  the  flashes  of  her 
wit  sparkled  in  her  changeful  eyes  and,  as  she  ex- 
pressed it,  in  her  "mottled  eyelashes."  She  made 
herself /)r^V/^^/5^/  she  went  into  society,  was  loved, 
sought,  courted;  sowing  around  her  hopeless  pas- 
sions, to  which  she  paid  little  attention,  but  retaining 
generally  as  friends  those  whom  she  would  not  take 
for  lovers.  Her  cousin,  Bussy,  her  master.  Menage, 
the  Prince  de  Conti  (brother  of  the  great  Conde),  the 
Superintendent  Fouquet,  wasted  their  sighs  upon  her; 
but  she  remained  inviolably  faithful  to  the  latter  in 
his  overthrow;  when  she  relates  his  trial  to  M.  de 
Pomponne  it  is  worth  while  to  notice  with  what 
tender  feeling  she  speaks  of  "our  dear  unfortunate 
one." 

Young  still  and  beautiful,  without  pretension,  she 
placed  herself  in  society  on  the  footing  of  devotion  to 
her  daughter,  wishing  for  no  other  happiness  than 
that  of  presenting  her,  and  watching  her  shine.  Mile, 
de  Sevigne  figured,  after  1663,  in  the  brilliant  ballets 
at  Versailles,  and  the  official  poet,  Benserade,  who 
filled  at  Court  the  place  that  Racine  and  Boileau  were 
to  hold  after  1672,  made  more  than  one  madrigal  in 
honour  of  that  "shepherdess,"  and  that  "nymph," 
whom  an  idolising  mother  called  "the  prettiest  girl 
in  France."  In  1669  M.  de  Grignan  obtained  her  in 
marriage,   and  sixteen  months  later  he  took  her  to 


/IDaOame  &c  Sevtone.  197 

Provence,  where  he  commanded  in  the  absence  of  M. 
Vendome.  Separated  henceforth  from  her  daughter, 
whom  she  never  again  saw  except  after  long  and  un- 
equal intervals,  Mme.  de  Sevigne  sought  comfort  for 
her  loneliness  in  a  daily  correspondence,  which  lasted 
till  her  death  in  1696,  a  period  of  twenty-five  years, 
except  for  a  few  interregnums,  when  mother  and 
daughter  were  briefly  reunited.  Before  this  separa- 
tion, in  1 67 1,  we  have  only  a  few  letters  of  Mme.  de 
Sevigne,  addressed  either  to  her  cousin  Bussy,  or  to 
M.  de  Pomponne  on  Fouquet's  trial.  It  is,  therefore, 
from  that  date  only  that  we  know  thoroughly  her 
private  life,  her  habits,  the  books  she  read,  and  even 
the  smallest  movements  of  the  society  in  which  she 
lived  and  of  which  she  was  the  soul. 

From  the  very  first  pages  of  this  correspondence  we 
find  ourselves  in  a  wholly  different  world  than  that  of 
the  Fronde  and  the  Regency;  we  perceive  that  what 
is  called  French  society  was  at  last  constituted.  No 
doubt  (and,  in  default  of  the  numerous  memoirs  of 
that  time,  the  anecdotes  related  by  Mme.  de  Sevigne 
would  prove  it), —  no  doubt  horrible  disorders,  dis- 
graceful orgies  were  prevalent  among  that  young  no- 
bility on  which  Louis  XIV  imposed,  as  the  price  of  his 
favour,  dignity,  politeness,  and  elegance;  no  doubt, 
under  that  brilliant  surface,  that  gildtd  glory,  there 
were  vices  enough  to  overflow  into  anotnor  Regency, 
especially  when  the  bigotry  at  the  close  of  the  reign 
set  them  all  to  fermenting.    But  at  least  a  conventional 


198  /IDaDame  ^c  Se\>ione. 

decorum  was  observed;  public  opinion  had  begun  to 
blast  whatever  was  ignoble  and  debauched.  More- 
over, while  disorder  and  brutality  were  becoming  less 
scandalous,  decency  and  the  employment  of  the  intel- 
lect were  gaining  in  simplicity.  The  qualification  of 
precieuse  had  passed  out  of  date;  people  remembered, 
with  a  smile,  that  they  had  once  been  that,  but  they 
were  so  no  longer.  No  one  descanted  interminably, 
as  they  formerly  did,  on  the  sonnet  of  Job  or  of 
Uranie,  on  the  Carte  de  Tendre,  or  the  nature  of  the 
novel;  but  they  talked,  they  conversed  —  on  Court 
news,  recollections  of  the  siege  of  Paris,  or  the  war  in 
Guienne;  Cardinal  de  Retz  related  his  travels,  M.  de 
La  Rochefoucauld  moralised,  Mme.  de  La  Fayette  made 
heartfelt  reflections,  and  Mme.  de  Sevigne  interrupted 
them  to  quote  a  clever  saying  of  her  daughter,  a  prank 
of  her  son,  an  aberration  of  the  worthy  d'Hacqueville 
or  of  M.  de  Brancas. 

We  find  it  difficult  in  these  days,  with  our  habits  of 
practical  occupation,  to  represent  to  ourselves  faith- 
fully this  life  of  leisure  and  of  talk.  The  world  now 
moves  so  fast,  so  many  things  are  brought  upon  the 
stage,  that  we  find  we  have  not  the  time  to  examine 
and  grasp  them.  Our  present  days  are  spent  in 
studies,  our  evenings  in  serious  discussions;  of  agree- 
able conversations,  interesting  talks,  we  have  few  or 
none.  The  noble  society  of  our  day,  which  has  pre- 
served to  some  extent  the  leisure  habits  of  the  two 
preceding  centuries,  seems  to  have  done  so  on  condi- 


/IDa&ame  ^c  QcviQnt  199 

tion  of  keeping  aloof  from  the  ideas  and  the  manners 
and  morals  of  the  present. 

At  the  period  of  which  I  speak,  conversation  had 
not  yet  become,  as  it  did  in  the  eighteenth  century  in 
the  salons  under  the  rule  of  Fontenelle,  an  occupation, 
a  business,  an  exaction;  wit  was  not  made  necessarily 
an  aim;  display,  geometrical,  philosophical,  and  senti- 
mental, was  not  demanded:  but  they  talked,  they 
conversed,  of  themselves  and  others,  of  little  or  of 
nothing.  It  was  conversation,  as  Mme.  de  Sevigne 
herself  says,  ad  infinitum:  "After  dinner,"  she  writes 
somewhere  to  her  daughter,  "we  went  to  talk  in  the 
most  agreeable  woods  in  the  world;  we  were  there 
till  six  o'clock,  engaged  in  various  sorts  of  conversa- 
tion so  kind,  so  tender,  so  amiable,  so  obliging,  both 
for  you  and  for  me,  that  I  am  touched  to  the  heart  by 
it."  Amid  a  course  of  society  so  easy,  so  simple,  so 
desultory,  and  so  gracefully  animated,  a  visit,  a  letter 
received,  insignificant  in  itself,  was  an  event  in  which 
all  took  pleasure  and  related  eagerly.  The  least  things 
became  of  value  from  the  manner  and  form  of  telling; 
it  was  art  which,  without  perceiving  it,  and  very 
negligently,  they  put  into  life. 

It  is  often  said  that  Mme.  de  Sevigne  gave  minute  care 
to  her  letters,  and  that  in  writing  them  she  thought, 
if  not  of  posterity,  at  least  of  the  social  world  of  her 
day,  whose  suffrages  she  sought.  That  is  false:  the 
days  of  Voiture  and  Balzac  were  past.  She  wrote 
usually  offhand,  as  the  pen  ran,  and  of  all  the  things 


200  /TOaDame  ^e  Sev>fgn^» 

she  could;  if  time  pressed,  she  scarcely  read  over  her 
letters.  "In  truth,"  she  says,  "between  friends  one 
ought  to  let  the  pens  trot  as  they  like;  mine  always 
has  the  rein  on  its  neck."  But  there  are  days  when 
she  has  more  time,  or  else  she  feels  in  better  humour 
for  writing;  then,  very  naturally,  she  takes  pains,  she 
arranges,  she  composes  very  much  as  La  Fontaine 
composed  a  fable:  such,  for  instance,  as  her  letter  to 
M.  de  Coulanges  on  the  marriage  of  Mademoiselle;  or 
the  one  about  poor  Picard,  dismissed  because  he  would 
not  spread  the  hay.  Letters  of  this  sort,  brilliant  in 
form  and  in  art,  in  which  there  were  not  too  many 
little  secrets  or  slanders,  made  talk  in  society  and 
every  one  desired  to  read  them.  "  1  must  not  forget 
to  tell  you  what  happened  this  morning,"  writes  Mme. 
de  Coulanges  to  her  friend;  "  I  was  told:  '  Madame,  a 
lacquey  from  Mme,  de  Thianges  is  here ' ;  I  ordered 
them  to  bring  him  in.  This  is  what  he  had  to  say  to 
me:  'Madame,  I  am  sent  by  Mme.  de  Thianges,  who 
begs  you  to  send  her  the  horse  letter  of  Mme.  de  Se- 
vigne,  and  also  that  of  the  meadow. '  1  told  the  lacquey 
that  I  would  take  them  to  his  mistress,  and  I  have 
done  so.  Your  letters  make  all  the  noise  they  de- 
serve; it  is  certain  that  they  are  delightful;  and  you 
are  as  much  so  as  your  letters." 

Correspondence  at  that  time  had,  like  conversation, 
great  importance;  but  neither  was  composed;  people 
simply  put  all  their  minds  and  all  their  souls  into 
them.     Mme.  de  Sevigne  praises  her  daughter  con- 


^aOame  De  Sevfane.  201 

tinually  in  the  matter  of  letters:  "You  write  incom- 
parable thoughts  and  effusions,"  and  she  adds  that  she 
reads  "here  and  there  "  certain  choice  passages  to  per- 
sons who  are  worthy  of  them:  "sometimes  I  give  a 
little  bit  to  Mme.  de  Villars,  but  she  wants  the  tender 
parts,  and  tears  fill  her  eyes." 

If  some  deny  to  Mme.  de  Sevigne  the  spontaneous- 
ness  of  her  letters,  no  one  has  ever  questioned  the 
sincerity  of  her  love  for  her  daughter;  and  there  again 
they  forget  the  period  in  which  she  lived,  and  how  in 
that  life  of  luxurious  idleness  persons  may  resemble 
fancies,  just  as  manias  may  often  become  passions. 
She  idolised  her  daughter,  and  had  early  established 
herself  on  that  footing  in  society.  Arnauld  d'Andilly 
called  her,  in  that  respect,  "a  pretty  pagan."  Sepa- 
ration had  only  increased  her  tenderness;  she  had 
scarcely  any  other  thing  to  speak  of;  the  questions 
and  compliments  of  those  she  met  always  brought  her 
back  to  it;  that  dear  and  almost  single  affection  of  her 
heart  ended,  in  the  long  run,  by  becoming  her  status, 
her  posture,  her  demeanour,  which  she  used  as  she 
did  her  fan.  Mme.  de  Sevigne  was  perfectly  sincere, 
frank,  and  an  enemy  to  all  pretence;  to  her,  among 
the  first,  do  we  owe  the  saying  that  a  person  is  true  ; 
she  might  have  invented  that  expression  for  her  daugh- 
ter if  M.  de  La  Rochefoucauld  had  not  already  found  it 
for  Mme.  de  La  Fayette ;  she  takes  pleasure  in  apply- 
ing it  to  those  she  loves.  When  we  have  analysed, 
and  twisted,  and  turned  in  all  ways  that  inexhaustible 


202  /lDat)ame  &c  QcviQwc* 

mother-love,  we  come  back  to  the  opinion  and  expla- 
nation of  M.  de  Pomponne:  "It  seems,  you  say,  that 
Mme.  de  Sevigne  loves  Mme.  de  Grignan  passionately; 
and  you  want  to  know  what  is  at  the  bottom  of  it. 
Shall  1  tell  you  ?  It  is  that  she  loves  her  passionately." 
It  would,  indeed,  be  very  ungrateful  to  cavil  at  Mme. 
de  Sevigne  for  this  innocent  and  legitimate  passion,  to 
which  we  owe  the  opportunity  to  follow  the  wittiest 
and  most  intellectual  of  women  through  twenty-five 
years  of  the  most  charming  period  of  the  most  delight- 
ful French  society. 

La  Fontaine,  painter  of  fields  and  animals,  did  not 
ignore  society,  and  has  often  pictured  it  with  dainty 
and  malicious  touches.  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  on  her 
side,  loved  the  fields;  she  made  long  stays  at  Livry 
with  the  Abbe  de  Coulanges,  or  on  her  own  estate  of 
Les  Rochers  in  Bretagne;  it  is  piquant  to  learn  under 
what  aspects  she  saw  and  has  pictured  Nature.  We 
at  once  perceive  that,  like  our  good  fabulist,  she  had 
early  read  Astree,  and  had  dreamed  in  her  youth 
beneath  the  mythological  shades  of  Vaux  and  Saint- 
Mande.  She  loves  to  walk  "by  the  rays  of  the  beau- 
tiful mistress  of  Endymion";  to  pass  two  hours 
"alone  with  the  Hamadryads";  her  trees  are  deco- 
rated with  inscriptions  and  ingenious  devices,  such  as 
passages  from  the  Pastor  fido  and  the  Aminta :  "Bella 
cosa  far  niente,  says  one  of  my  trees;  another  an- 
swers :  Amor  odit  inertes. ' '  And  elsewhere  she  says: 
"As  for  our  sentences,   they  are  not  defaced;    I  go 


/fDaDame  C)e  StviQwt  203 

often  to  look  at  them;  they  are  even  increased,  and 
two  trees  side  by  side  sometimes  contradict  each 
other:  La  lontanania  ogtii  gran  piaga  salda ;  and 
then:  Piaga  d'amor  non  si  sana  moi." 

These  rather  insipid  reminiscences  of  pastorals  and 
romances  come  naturally  from  her  pen,  and  bring  out 
very  agreeably  many  fresh  and  novel  descriptions  that 
are  wholly  her  own: 

"  I  came  here  (Livry)  to  end  the  summer  and  say  farewell  to  the 
leaves;  they  are  still  on  the  trees,  they  have  only  changed  colour;  in- 
stead of  being  green  they  are  nov:  aurora  colour,  and  so  many  sorts 
of  aurora  that  they  compose  a  brocade  of  gold,  very  rich  and  mag- 
nificent, which  we  try  to  think  lovelier  than  green — if  only  by  way 
of  change." 

And  when  she  is  at  Les  Rochers  she  cries  out:  "I 
should  be  very  happy  in  these  woods  if  1  only  had  a 
leaf  that  sings:  ah!  the  pretty  thing  a  singing  leaf 
would  be!"  How  she  pictures  for  us  "the  triumph 
of  the  month  of  May"!  when  the  "nightingale,  the 
cuckoo,  the  white-throated  warblers  in  the  forest 
herald  the  spring,"  How  she  makes  us  feel  and  al- 
most live  in  "those  beautiful  crystal  days  of  autumn, 
which  are  no  longer  hot  and  yet  not  cold  " !  When  her 
son,  to  pay  for  some  foolish  extravagance,  cuts  down 
the  ancient  woods  of  Buron,  she  is  roused  to  emo- 
tion, she  weeps  with  all  those  fugitive  dryads,  those 
evicted  wood-nymphs. 

Because  we  often  find  her  in  a  gay  and  frolicsome 
humour,  we  should  do  wrong  to  consider  Mme.  de 
Sevigne  either  frivolous  or  shallow.    She  was  serious. 


204  /fOa&ame  t>c  Qcx^iQwc. 

even  sad,  especially  during  the  sojourns  she  made  in 
the  country;  revery  held  a  great  place  in  her  life.  But 
here  it  is  necessary  to  come  to  an  understanding: 
she  did  not  dream  in  her  long  and  sombre  avenues 
like  Delphine,  or  the  mistress  of  Oswald;  that  style  of 
revery  was  not  invented  in  her  day;  it  needed,  as  a 
preliminary,  that  Mme.  de  Stael  should  write  her  ad- 
mirable book  on  the  hiflitence  des  Passions  sur  le 
Bonheur.  Until  then,  dreaming  was  a  much  easier, 
much  simpler,  much  more  personal  thing;  yet  it  was 
one  of  which  the  dreamer  rendered  little  account  to 
herself:  it  was  thinking  of  her  daughter  in  Provence, 
of  her  son  with  the  armies  of  the  king,  of  her  friends 
far  away  or  dead;  it  was  saying:  "As  for  my  life, 
you  know  it;  it  is  passed  with  five  or  six  friends 
whose  society  pleases  me,  and  in  duties  to  which  I 
am  compelled  and  which  are  "no  small  matter.  But 
what  vexes  me  is,  that  in  doing  nothing  the  days  go 
by,  and  our  poor  life  is  made  up  of  such  days,  and  we 
grow  old  and  die.     I  think  that  hard." 

Formal  and  precise  religion,  which  governed  life  in 
those  days,  contributed  much  to  temper  the  licence  of 
sensibility  and  imagination,  which,  since  then,  has 
felt  no  curb.  Mme.  de  Sevigne  guarded  herself  care- 
fully from  those  thoughts  over  which  she  believed  it 
"best  to  glide."  She  expressly  desires  that  morals 
be  Christian,  and  more  than  once  she  jokes  her  daugh- 
ter on  being  tainted  with  Descartism.  As  for  her, 
amid  the  chances  and  changes  of  this  world,  she  bows 


/IDa&ame  &e  Sevigne.  205 

her  head,  and  takes  refuge  in  a  sort  of  providential 
fatalism,  which  her  relations  with  Port-Royal  and  her 
readings  of  Nicole  and  Saint  Augustine  had  inspired 
in  her.  This  religious  and  resigned  tendency  in  her 
increased  with  age,  without  altering  in  any  way  the 
serenity  of  her  temper;  but  it  often  communicated  to 
her  language  something  more  strongly  wise  and  a 
greater  tenderness.  In  a  letter  to  M.  de  Coulanges,  on 
the  death  of  the  minister  Louvois,  she  rises  almost  to 
the  sublimity  of  Bossuet,  just  as  at  other  times  and  in 
other  places  she  attains  to  the  comedy  of  Moliere. 

M.  de  Saint-Surin,  in  his  excellent  work  on  Mme. 
de  Sevigne,  has  lost  no  occasion  to  contrast  her  with 
Mme.  de  Stael,  and  to  place  her  above  that  famous 
woman.  I  believe  there  is  interest  and  profit  in  thus 
comparing  them;  but  it  ought  not  to  be  done  to  the 
detriment  of  either.  Mme.  de  Stael  represents  a  com- 
pletely new  society;  Mme.  de  Sevigne  a  vanished 
society;  hence  vast  differences,  which  one  might  be 
tempted  at  first  sight  to  explain  solely  by  the  different 
turn  of  their  minds  and  natures.  Without  pretending 
to  deny  the  profound  divergence  of  their  two  souls  — 
one  of  which  knew  only  maternal  love,  the  other 
knowing  every  passion,  the  most  generous  and  even 
the  most  virile  —  I  find  in  both,  looking  closely  at 
them,  many  weaknesses,  many  ordinary  qualities, 
the  divers  developments  of  which  were  solely  the 
result  of  the  diversity  of  periods.  What  natural  ease 
full  of  gracious  light-heartedness,  what  dazzling  pages 


2o6  /TDaDame  De  Sevi^ne. 

of  pure  intellect  in  Mme.  de  Stael  when  sentiment 
does  not  interfere  and  she  allows  her  philosophy  and 
her  politics  to  slumber!  And  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  does 
she  never  descant  and  philosophise  ?  Why  else  should 
she  make  her  daily  reading  in  Saint  Augustine?  —  for 
this  woman,  called  frivolous,  read  all  and  read  well: 
"It  gives,"  she  said,  "such  pale  colours  to  the  mind 
not  to  enjoy  solid  reading."  She  read  Rabelais,  Mon- 
taigne, and  Pascal,  the  "Cleopatra"  of  Quintilian, 
Saint  John  Chrysostom  and  Tacitus,  and  Virgil,  "not 
travestied,  but  in  the  grandeur  of  Latin  and  Italian." 
When  it  rained,  she  read  folios  in  twelve  days.  Dur- 
ing Lent  she  made  it  a  joy  to  give  herself  up  to  Bour- 
daloue.  Her  conduct  toward  Fouquet  in  his  overthrow 
lets  us  imagine  what  devotion  she  would  have  been 
capable  of  in  times  of  revolution.  If  she  shows  her- 
self a  little  vainglorious  when  the  king,  one  evening, 
dances  with  her,  or  when,  at  Saint-Cyr,  he  pays  her  a 
compliment  after  the  acting  of  Esther,  who  else  of 
her  sex  would  have  been  more  philosophical.?  Did 
not  Mme.  de  Stael  put  herself  to  great  cost  and  trouble 
to  obtain  a  word  or  a  glance  from  the  conqueror  of 
Egypt  and  Italy  }  Certainly  a  woman  who,  mingling 
from  youth  with  Menage,  Godeau,  Benserade,  and 
their  like,  preserved  herself  by  the  sole  force  of  her 
good  sense  from  their  insipidities  and  punctilios;  who 
evaded,  as  if  playfully,  the  more  refined  and  seduc- 
tive pretensions  of  Saint-Evremond  and  her  cousin 
Bussy;  a   woman,    friend   and   admirer  of  Mile,    de 


/IDa&amc  t)e  Seviane.  207 

Scudery  and  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  who  kept  herself 
equally  distant  from  the  romantic  sentiments  of  the 
one  and  the  strait-laced  reserve  of  the  other;  who, 
allied  with  Port-Royal,  and  feeding  on  the  works  of 
ces  Messieurs,  valued  none  the  less  Montaigne,  and 
quoted  none  the  less  Rabelais,  and  who  wished  no 
other  inscription  on  what  she  called  her  convent  than 
the  words:  "Sacred  Liberty,"  or  "Do  what  you  like," 
as  at  the  Abbey  of  Theleme — such  a  woman  may  frolic 
and  sport  and  "glide  over  thoughts,"  and  choose  to 
take  things  by  their  familiar  and  diverting  side,  but, 
all  the  same,  she  gives  proof  of  an  inward  energy,  an 
originality,  that  was  rare  indeed. 

There  is  one  single  instance  in  which  we  cannot 
help  regretting  that  Mme.  de  Sevigne  gave  way  to  her 
light-hearted,  bantering  habit;  an  instance  in  which 
we  absolutely  refuse  to  share  her  jest,  and  for  which, 
after  seeking  all  its  extenuating  reasons,  we  find  it 
hard  to  forgive  her:  it  is  when  she  relates  so  gaily  to 
her  daughter  the  revolt  of  the  Bas-Breton  peasantry, 
and  the  horrible  severities  that  repressed  it.  So  long  as 
she  confined  herself  to  laughing  at  the  Assemblies,  at 
the  country-gentlemen  and  their  giddy  galas,  at  their 
enthusiasm  for  voting  everything  " 'twixt  midnight 
and  one  o'clock,"  and  the  other  after-dinner  follies  of 
her  Breton  neighbours,  it  is  all  very  well;  it  is,  in  fact, 
a  merry  and  legitimate  pleasantry,  recalling  in  places 
the  touch  of  Moliere;  but  from  the  moment  that  M,  de 
Forbin  arrives  with  six  thousand  troops  against  the 


2o8  /roa&ame  De  SeviGne. 

malcontents,  and  those  poor  devils,  perceiving  from 
afar  the  soldiers,  disperse  among  the  fields  or  fall 
upon  their  knees,  crying  out,  Mea  culpa  (the  only 
French  words  they  know) ;  when,  to  punish  Rennes, 
its  parliament  is  transferred  to  Vannes;  when  they 
take,  haphazard,  twenty-five  men  and  hang  them; 
when  they  drive  out  and  evict  a  whole  street-full  of 
people,  women  in  childbed,  old  men  and  children, 
and  forbid  that  any  succour  be  given  them  on  pain  of 
death;  when  they  torture  on  the  wheel;  when  they 
quarter;  and  when,  weary  themselves  of  torturing  and 
quartering,  they  hang  —  in  the  midst  of  such  horrors 
perpetrated  upon  innocent  persons  or  poor,  misguided 
creatures,  we  suffer  in  seeing  Mme.  de  Sevigne  jesting 
almost  as  usual;  we  wish  she  had  shown  indignation, 
a  burning,  bitter,  heartfelt  indignation;  above  all,  we 
would  like  to  erase  from  her  letters  such  lines  as 
these: 

"  The  real  rioters  at  Rennes  ran  away  long  ago,  so  the  good  have 
to  suffer  in  place  of  the  wicked;  but  I  think  it  ail  very  right,  provided 
the  four  thousand  soldiers  who  are  at  Rennes  under  MM.  de  Forbin  and 
de  Vins  do  not  prevent  me  from  walking  in  my  woods,  which  are  of 
a  height  and  beauty  that  is  marvellous.  .  .  .  They  have  captured 
sixty  of  the  burghers,  and  begin  to  hang  them  to-morrow.  This 
province  will  be  a  fine  example  to  all  the  others;  it  will  teach  them  to 
respect  their  governors  and  not  to  insult  them  and  fling  stones  into 
their  gardens.  .  .  .  You  speak  very  humorously  of  our  troubles; 
but  we  have  no  longer  so  many  broken  on  the  wheel;  only  one  a  week 
to  keep  justice  going;  the  hangings  seem  to  me  now  a  refreshment." 

The  Due  de  Chaulnes,  who  instigated  all  these  cruel- 
ties because   stones   were   thrown   into    his    garden 


COMTESSE  DE  GRIQNAN. 


/TOa^ame  k>c  Sevngne.  209 

and  insults  were  shouted  to  him  (the  most  personal  of 
them  being  "fat  pig"),  was  not  lowered  one  iota 
thereb}'  in  Mme.  de  Sevigne's  estimation;  he  remained 
for  her  and  for  Mme.  de  Grignan  "our  dear  duke,  " 
and  later,  when  he  is  appointed  ambassador  to  Rome 
and  leaves  Bretagne,  she  says  the  whole  region  is 
"left  to  sadness."  Certainly  there  is  matter  here  for 
reflection  on  the  morals  and  the  civilisation  of  the 
great  century.  We  regret  that  on  this  occasion  Mme. 
de  Sevigne's  heart  did  not  rise  above  the  prejudices  of 
her  time;  it  was  fitted  to  do  so,  for  her  kindness  and 
goodness  equalled  her  beauty  and  her  grace.  There 
were  times  when  she  recommended  galley-slaves  to 
the  mercy  of  M.  de  Vivonne  or  to  M.  de  Grignan. 
The  most  interesting  of  her  protege's  was  a  gentleman 
of  Provence,  whose  name  has  not  been  preserved. 
"The  poor  young  fellow,"  she  says,  "was  attached 
to  M.  Fouquet;  he  has  been  convicted  of  having  been 
the  means  of  conveying  a  letter  to  Mme.  Fouquet 
from  her  husband,  for  which  he  is  condemned  to  the 
galleys  for  five  years;  it  is  a  rather  extraordinary  case. 
You  know  that  he  is  one  of  the  most  honourable 
young  men  you  could  find,  and  as  fit  for  the  galleys 
as  to  catch  the  moon  by  his  teeth." 

The  style  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne  has  been  so  often 
and  so  intelligently  judged,  analysed,  admired,  that  it 
would  be  difficult  to-day  to  find  eulogy  both  novel  and 
suitable  to  apply  to  it;  on  the  other  hand,  I  do  not 
find  myself  disposed  to  revive  a  worn-out  topic  by 

VOL.  II. — 14. 


2IO  /iDaDame  De  Sepigne* 

cavilling  criticism.  A  single  general  observation  will 
suffice:  it  is  that  we  may  connect  the  grand  and 
beautiful  styles  of  the  Louis  XIV  period  with  two 
different  systems,  two  opposite  manners.  Malherbe 
and  Balzac  founded  in  our  literature  the  learned, 
polished,  chastened,  cultivated  style;  in  the  compo- 
sition of  which  they  came  from  thought  to  expression, 
slowly,  by  degrees,  and  by  dint  of  tentatives  and 
erasures.  This  is  the  style  that  Boileau  advised  for 
all  purposes;  he  would  fain  have  a  work  returned 
twenty  times  to  the  stocks  to  be  polished  and  re- 
polished  constantly;  he  boasts  of  having  taught 
Racine  to  write  easy  verses  in  a  difficult  manner. 
Racine  is,  in  fact,  the  most  perfect  specimen  of  this 
style  in  poesy ;  Flechier  was  less  successful  in  his  prose. 
But,  by  the  side  of  this  style  of  writing,  always  some- 
what uniform  and  academic,  there  is  another,  widely 
different,  free,  capricious,  variable,  without  traditional 
method,  and  wholly  conformed  to  diversities  of  talent 
and  genius.  Montaigne  and  Regnier  gave  admirable 
samples  of  it,  and  Queen  Marguerite  a  most  charming 
one  in  her  familiar  memoirs,  the  work  of  her  apres-dis- 
ne'es:  this  is  the  broad,  untrammelled,  abundant  style 
that  follows  the  current  of  ideas  ;  the  style  of  the 
first  thought,  the  prime-sautier,  as  Montaigne  himself 
would  say;  it  is  that  of  La  Fontaine  and  Moliere,  that 
of  Fenelon,  of  Bossuet,  of  the  Due  de  Saint-Simon,  and 
of  Mme.  de  Sevigne.  The  latter  excels  in  it;  she  lets 
her  pen  "trot  with  the  reins  on  its  neck,  "  and,  as  it 


/IDat)amc  Oc  Sevi^ne.  211 

goes  along,  she  scatters  in  profusion  colours,  compari- 
sons, images,  while  wit  and  sentiment  escape  her  on 
all  sides.  She  is  thus  placed,  without  intending  or 
suspecting  it,  in  the  front  rank  of  the  writers  of  our 
language. 

1  ask  myself  how  Mme.  de  Sevigne  issues  from  a 
fresh  study  of  her:  She  issues  such  as  a  first  sight  of 
her  suggested,  and  more  than  ever  like  unto  herself. 
1  am  confirmed,  after  study  and  reflection,  in  the  idea 
that  a  first  frank  impression  had  given  me  of  her. 
In  the  first  place,  the  more  we  think  of  it  the  better 
we  explain  to  ourselves  her  mother-love;  that  love 
which,  for  her,  represented  all  the  others.  Her  rich, 
strong  nature,  a  nature  sound  and  blooming,  in  which 
gaiety  was  chiefly  the  temperament  with  serious 
thought  beneath  it,  never  had  a  passion  properly  so- 
called.  Left  an  orphan  early,  she  never  felt  filial  ten- 
derness; she  never  spoke  of  her  mother;  once  or 
twice  she  even  jested  about  the  memory  of  her  father, 
whom  she  never  knew.  As  for  conjugal  love,  she 
tried  it  loyally;  it  soon  became  bitter  to  her,  and  she 
had  no  chance  to  give  herself  up  to  it.  Left  a  young 
and  beautiful  widow,  with  a  free,  intrepid  spirit,  had 
she,  in  that  dazzling  role  of  Celimene,  some  hidden 
weakness  that  lay  concealed  ?  Did  a  spark  ever  fall 
upon  her  heart  ?  Was  she  ever  in  danger  of  an  in- 
stant's forgetfulness  with  her  cousin  Bussy  ?  We 
never  know  what  to  expect  of  these  smiling,  brilliant 
creatures,  and  we  should  often  be  finely  duped  if  we 


212  /iDaoamc  De  Sevtouc. 

fastened  upon  words  which,  said  by  others,  would 
mean  a  great  deal.  The  fact  is  that  she  resisted 
Bussy,  her  greatest  peril,  and  though  she  may  have 
liked  him  a  little,  she  never  loved  him  with  passion. 
Passion  she  never  felt  for  any  one  until  the  day  when 
the  accumulation  of  her  treasures  of  tenderness  fell 
upon  the  head  of  her  daughter  to  be  nevermore  dis- 
placed. An  elegiac  poet  has  remarked  that  a  love 
which  comes  late  is  often  the  most  violent;  all  the 
arrears  of  feelings  and  emotions  are  paid  at  once: 

"  ScBpe  venit  magno  fcenore  tardus  amor.  " 

So  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne.  Her  daughter  inherited  all 
the  savings  of  that  rich  and  feeling  heart,  which  had 
said  to  itself  until  that  day,  "1  wait."  There  is  the 
true  answer  to  those  hypercritical  minds  who  have 
chosen  to  see  in  Mme.  de  Sevigne's  love  for  her 
daughter  an  affectation  and  form  of  posing.  Mme. 
de  Grignan  was  the  great,  the  one  only  passion  of 
her  mother;  and  this  maternal  tenderness  had  all  the 
characteristics  of  passion,  enthusiasm,  prejudice,  and 
slight  absurdity  (if  I  may  apply  that  word  to  such 
persons),  with  a  naivete  of  indiscretion  that  makes 
us  smile.  Let  us  not  complain  of  it.  Mme.  de 
Sevigne's  whole  correspondence  is  illumined  by  this 
passion  which  came,  at  last,  to  add  itself  to  the  bril- 
liancy, already  so  varied,  of  her  imagination  and  her 
delightful  humour.' 

'  Mme.de  Grignan's  merits  have  been  much  discussed;  her  mother 
has  done  her  some  wrong  in  our  eyes  by  praising  her  too  much.     The 


/IDabame  De  ^cmQixL  213 

On  this  latter  point,  I  mean  temperament  and 
iiumour,  let  us  try  to  understand  Mme.  de  Sevigne 
thoroughly.  In  speaking  of  her,  we  are  speaking  of 
grace  itself,  not  a  soft  and  languid  grace,  but  a  lively, 
overflowing  grace,  full  of  wit  and  intellect,  and  with- 
out the  least  touch  of  pale  colour.  She  has  a  vein  of 
Moliere  in  her.  There  's  a  Dorine  in  Mme.  de  Sevigne, 
a  Dorine  of  the  great  v/orld  and  the  best  company,  with 
very  nearly  the  same  vigour  and  raciness.  A  few 
words  of  Tallemant  have  very  well  characterised  that 
charming  and  powerful  feminine  nature,  such  as  it 
showed  itself,  quite  young,  in  its  abounding  life. 
After  saying  that  he  thinks  her  one  of  the  most 
amiable  and  most  honourable  women  in  Paris,  he 
adds:  "She  sings,  she  dances,  she  has  a  very  lively 
and  agreeable  wit;  she  is  brusque  and  cannot  keep 
herself  from  saying  what  she  thinks  pretty,  although 
quite  often  they  are  things  rather  free."  That  is  a 
saying  we  should  not  lose  sight  of  in  thinking  of 
her,  covering  it,  however,  with  all  the  delicacy  and 
courtesy  that  we  like.  There  was  joy  in  her.  She 
verified  in  her  person  Ninon's  saying:  "The  joy  of 
the  spirit  shows  its  strength."     She  was  of  the  race 

son,  who  was  somewhat  of  a  libertine,  appears  to  us  more  agreeable. 
!t  would  seem  as  if  Mme.  de  Sevigne's  reason  and  gaiety,  so  charm- 
:ngly  mingled  in  her,  were  divided  between  her  children ;  the  son 
having  all  his  mother's  grace  but  not  her  reason;  the  daughter  having 
the  reason  only,  and  with  it  a  certain  crabbedness,  not  tempered,  and 
without  either  piquancy  or  charm.  Certain  tales  of  her  insolence  and 
ill-temper  have  come  down  to  us. 


214  /IDa^ame  &e  Sevione, 

of  minds  to  which  belonged  Moliere,  Ninon  herself, 
Mme.  Cornuel  somewhat,  and  La  Fontaine;  a  genera- 
tion slightly  anterior  to  Racine  and  Boileau,  and  more 
full-blooded,  more  vigorously  nourished.  "You 
seem  born  for  pleasures,"  Mme.  de  La  Fayette  said  to 
her,  "and  pleasures  seem  made  for  you.  Your  pre- 
sence increases  all  amu^ments,  and  amusements  in- 
crease your  beauty  when  they  surround  you.  In 
short,  joy  is  the  true  state  of  your  soul,  and  grief  is 
more  contrary  to  you  than  to  any  one  else  in  the 
world."  She  said  herself,  recollecting  an  old  friend: 
"1  have  just  seen  M.  de  Larrei,  son  of  our  poor  friend 
Lenet  with  whom  we  laughed  so  much;  for  never 
was  any  youth  so  full  of  laughter  as  ours,  and  of  alt 
kinds." 

Her  rather  irregular  but  real  beauty  became  radiant 
at  moments  when  she  grew  animated;  her  counten- 
ance was  lighted  by  her  mind,  or,  to  quote  a  saying 
literally,  "  her  mind  even  dazzled  our  eyes."  One  of 
her  friends  (the  Abbe  Arnauld),  who  had  as  little  im- 
agination as  it  was  possible  to  have,  must  have  found 
some  in  order  to  describe  her  when  he  tells  us  :  "I 
seem  to  see  her  still  as  she  appeared  to  me  the  first 
time  I  had  the  honour  of  seeing  her,  seated  in  her  car- 
riage all  open,  between  monsieur  her  son  and  made- 
moiselle her  daughter:  all  three  such  as  the  poets 
represent  Latona  with  the  young  Apollo  and  the  young 
Diana,  such  charm  shone  forth  from  the  mother  and 
children."     We  see  her  there,  in  her  natural  frame  and 


/n>a&ame  &e  Sevtgne.  215 

full  expansion:  beauty,  mind,  and  grace  unveiled  and 
glowing  in  the  sunshine. 

I  must  note,  however,  one  shadow.  Her  joyous- 
ness,  real  as  it  was,  was  not  for  all  seasons,  nor  out 
of  season,  and  as  the  years  went  on  it  lessened,  though 
it  was  never  extinguished.  Speaking  of  a  journey 
she  made  in  1672,  during  which  she  regretted  not 
having  the  company  of  her  amiable  cousin  de  Cou- 
langes,  she  writes:  "To  feel  joy  we  must  be  with 
joyous  people.  You  know  I  am  what  people  want 
me  to  be;  1  originate  nothing."  Which  merely  means 
that  this  charming  spirit  possesses  all  tones  and 
could  adjust  itself  to  the  notes  of  others.  Certain  it  is 
that  even  amid  sadness  and  vexations  she  continued 
the  finest-tempered  woman,  with  the  most  playful  im- 
agination ever  seen.  She  had  a  way  of  her  own,  a 
gift  of  sudden  and  familiar  imagery  with  which  she 
could  clothe  her  thought  unexpectedly,  as,  indeed, 
none  but  she  could  do.  Even  when  that  thought  was 
serious,  even  when  sensibility  was  at  the  bottom  of 
it,  she  used  words  that  play  upon  it  and  give  the  effect 
of  gaiety.  Her  spirit  could  never  divest  itself  of  that 
vivacious  sparkle,  that  gaiety  of  colour.  She  was  just 
the  contrary  of  her  good  friends  the  Jansenists;  theirs 
was  the  sad  style. 

And,  now,  if  what  1  have  here  said  should  seem  to 
some  critical  minds  to  have  pushed  admiration  for 
Mme.  de  Sevigne  too  far,  will  they  permit  me  to  ask 
them  a  question  }     Have  you  read  her  ?     By  reading, 


2i6  /lDat)ame  t>c  Sevigne. 

I  do  not  mean  running  hastily  over  lier  letters,  nor 
singling  out  two  or  three  which  enjoy  an  almost 
classic  reputation — such  as  those  on  the  marriage  of 
Mademoiselle,  on  the  death  of  Vatel,  on  those  of  M. 
de  Turenne  and  the  young  Due  de  Longueville — but 
entering  in  and  going  with  her,  step  by  step,  through 
the  ten  volumes  of  her  letters,  following  all,  winding 
ihroiigh  all  (as  she  herself  would  say),  doing  for  her 
as  we  do  for  "Clarissa  Harlowe  "  when  we  have  a 
fortnight's  rain  and  leisure  in  the  country.  After  that 
not  very  terrible  trial  let  any  one  find  f^iult  with  my 
admiration  if  he  has  the  courage,  and  if,  indeed,  he 
remembers  it. 


VIII. 

IBOBBUCt 


217 


vni. 
Bossuet. 

THE  fame  of  Bossuet  has  become  one  of  the 
religions  of  France,  it  is  recognised,  it  is  pro- 
claimed, and  men  honour  themselves  in  bring- 
ing to  it  daily  fresh  tribute,  in  finding  new  reasons  for 
its  existence  and  its  growth ;  they  discuss  it  no  longer. 
It  is  the  privilege  of  true  greatness  to  define  itself 
more  and  more  clearly  as  it  recedes,  and  to  command 
from  a  distance.  What  is  singular,  nevertheless,  in 
this  fate,  this  sort  of  apotheosis  of  Bossuet,  is  that  he 
thus  becomes  greater  and  greater  for  us  without,  for 
all  that,  inducing  us  to  think  him  necessarily  right  in 
certain  of  the  most  important  controversies  in  which 
he  was  engaged.  We  love  F^nelon,  we  cherish  his 
graces,  his  noble  and  refined  ingratiations,  his  chaste 
elegances;  we  forgive  him  readily  for  what  are  called 
his  errors;  but  Bossuet  combats  them,  not  only  forci- 
bly, but  to  excess,  with  a  species  of  hardness.  No 
matter!  the  great  voice  of  the  contradictor  carries  you 
away  in  spite  of  yourself,  and  forces  you  to  bow  your 
head  regardless  of  your  inward  attachment  to  him  he 

2ig 


2  20  :ffiossuet. 

is  striking  down.  So  with  the  long  and  obstinate 
pitched  battles  waged  on  the  Gallican  question. 
Whether  you  are  Gallican  or  whether  you  are  not, 
vou  applaud  or  you  breathe  a  sigh  over  that  spot  of 
the  career,  but  the  illustrious  course  as  a  whole  loses 
nothing  of  its  grandeur  and  its  majesty  in  your 
eyes. 

I  shall  venture  to  say  the  same  thing  of  the  relent- 
less war  that  Bossuet  waged  against  Protestantism 
under  all  its  forms.  Every  enlightened  Protestant, 
making  his  reserves  on  points  of  history,  will  own, 
with  respect,  that  he  never  encountered  another  such 
adversary.  In  politics  also,  however  little  of  a  partisan 
one  may  be  of  the  consecration  theory  and  the  right 
divine  such  as  Bossuet  institutes  and  proclaims  it,  we 
should  be  almost  sorry  if  that  doctrine  had  not  found 
so  simple,  so  manly,  so  sincere  an  organ,  and  one  so 
innately  convinced.  A  God,  a  Christ,  a  bishop,  a 
king — there,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  the  luminous  sphere 
in  which  Bossuet's  thought  evolves  itself  and  reigns; 
there  is  his  ideal  for  the  world. 

Just  as  in  ancient  times  there  was  a  people  apart, 
who,  under  the  inspiration  and  guidance  of  Moses, 
kept  clear  and  distinct  the  idea  of  a  God,  an  ever- 
present  Creator,  governing  the  world  directly,  while 
all  the  neighbouring  peoples  wandered  from  that  idea, 
confused  to  them  in  clouds  of  fancy,  or  smothered 
under  phantoms  of  the  imagination,  or  submerged  in 
the  exuberant  luxury  of  nature,   so   Bossuet   among 


JACQUES  BfNIQNE  BOSSUET. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


Bossuet.  221 

moderns  has  grasped,  more  than  any  other,  that  sim- 
ple idea  of  order,  authority,  unity,  of  continual  govern- 
ment by  Providence,  and  he  applies  it  to  all  things 
without  effort,  and  as  if  by  undeniable  deduction. 
Bossuet  is  the  Hebrew  genius  extended  and  fertilised 
by  Christianity,  open  to  all  the  acquisitions  of  the 
intellect,  but  retaining  something  of  sovereign  prohi- 
bition and  closing  his  vast  horizon  precisely  where, 
for  him,  light  ends.  In  tone  and  gesture  he  belongs 
to  the  race  of  Moses.  He  mingles  the  bearing  of  the 
Prophet-King  with  the  emotions  of  an  ardent  and 
sublime  pathos;  he  is  the  eloquent  voice  par  excel- 
lence, the  simplest,  the  strongest,  the  most  abrupt, 
the  most  familiar,  yet  resounding  with  sudden  thun- 
der. Within  the  bounds  of  his  rigid  and  imperious 
current  flow  treasures  of  eternal  human  ethics.  It  is 
through  all  these  characteristics  that  he  is  still  unique 
for  us,  and  that,  whatever  use  may  be  made  of  his 
words,  he  remains  our  model  of  the  highest  eloquence 
and  the  noblest  language. 

Jacques  Benigne  Bossuet,  born  at  Dijon,  September 
27,  1627,  of  a  good  and  ancient  bourgeois  family  of 
magistrates  and  members  of  parliaments,  was  brought 
up  among  books  in  the  family  library.  His  father, 
having  entered,  as  dean  of  counsellors  (a  newly  cre- 
ated office),  the  Parliament  of  Metz,  left  his  children 
in  care  of  his  brother,  who  was  counsellor  to  the 
Parliament  of  Dijon.  Young  Bossuet,  who  lived  in 
his  uncle's  house,  attended  classes  at  the  Jesuit  college 


222  ffiossuet. 

of  the  town.  He  distinguished  himself  early  by  a 
surprising  capacity  of  memory  and  comprehension; 
he  knew  Virgil  by  heart,  and  a  little  later  he  knew 
Homer.  His  great  pagan  preference,  if  I  may  so  ex- 
press it,  was  instinctively  first  for  Homer,  then  for 
Virgil;  Horace,  to  his  taste  and  his  judgment,  came 
later.  But  the  book  which,  above  all,  determined  the 
genius  and  the  vocation  of  Bossuet,  and  which  be- 
came the  regulator  of  all  within  him,  was  the  Bible. 
It  is  related  that  the  first  time  he  read  it  he  was,  as  it 
were,  illumined  and  transported.  He  had  found  the 
source  whence  his  own  genius  was  to  flow,  like  one 
of  the  four  great  rivers  in  Genesis. 

Bossuet  was  destined  in  childhood  for  the  Church: 
tonsured  when  eight  years  of  age,  he  was  barely 
thirteen  when  he  was  appointed  to  a  canonry  of  the 
cathedral  at  Metz.  His  boyhood  and  his  adolescence 
were  therefore  regular,  pure,  and  wholly  directed  to- 
ward the  Temple.  He  went  to  Paris  for  the  first  time  in 
September,  1642.  It  is  said  that  on  the  very  day  of  his 
arrival  he  saw  the  entrance  of  Cardinal  de  Richelieu,  in 
a  dying  condition,  on  his  return  from  his  vengeance 
on  the  south  of  France;  the  minister  was  borne  in  a 
movable  chamber  covered  with  scarlet  cloth.  To  have 
seen,  were  it  only  once,  Richelieu,  all  powerful  in  the 
purple,  and  soon  after  to  see  the  Fronde,  civil  war  un- 
chained, and  anarchy,  was  for  Bossuet  a  compendious 
course  in  politics,  from  which  he  drew  the  sound  les- 
son: better  one  master  than  a  thousand  masters,  and, 


Bossuet.  223 

better  still,  that  the  master  be  the  king  himself  and 
not  the  minister. 

Entering,  for  his  course  in  philosophy,  the  college 
of  Navarre,  he  distinguished  himself  in  themes  and 
addresses  in  public;  he  was  a  prodigy  and  a  school 
angel  before  he  became  the  eagle  we  admire.  We 
all  know  that,  being  extolled  at  the  hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet  by  the  Marquis  de  Feuquieres,  who  had 
known  his  father  at  Metz  and  extended  his  goodwill 
to  the  son,  young  Bossuet  was  taken  there  one  even- 
ing to  preach  an  impromptu  sermon.  In  lending  him- 
self to  such  singular  exercises,  exhibitions  at  which 
his  person  and  his  talent  were  challenged,  treated  like 
a  virtuoso  of  intellect  in  the  salons  of  the  hotel  de 
Rambouillet  and  that  of  de  Nevers,  it  does  not  appear 
that  Bossuet's  vanity  was  touched  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree; there  is  no  other  example  of  a  precocious  genius 
thus  lauded  and  caressed  by  society  and  remaining  as 
truly  exempt  from  all  self-love  and  coquetry. 

He  often  went  to  Metz  to  repose  himself  in  study 
and  a  sterner  life  after  his  successes  and  triumphs  in 
Paris.  He  was  there  ordained,  successively,  subdea- 
con,  deacon,  archdeacon,  and  priest  (1652).  He  even 
settled  himself  in  Metz  for  six  years  to  fulfil  assidu- 
ously his  functions  as  archdeacon  and  canon.  It  was 
then  that  he  preached  the  first  sermons  that  we  have 
of  his,  and  his  first  panegyrics;  also  he  took  up 
arms  for  the  first  time  as  a  controversialist  against  the 
Protestants,  who   abounded   in   that   province.     In  a 


224  Bossuet. 

word,  Bossuet  conducted  himself  like  a  militant  young 
Levite,  who,  instead  of  accepting  at  once  an  agreeable 
post  at  the  centre  of  all  things  in  the  capital,  preferred 
to  inure  himself  and  temper  himself  by  bearing  the 
arms  of  the  Word  where  duty  and  danger  called  him, 
on  the  frontier. 

Of  Bossuet's  earliest  sermons,  among  those  he 
preached  at  Metz  in  his  youth,  one  has  been  spe- 
cially pointed  out  by  the  Abbe  Vaillant;  it  is  that  for 
the  ninth  Sunday  after  Whitsunday.  Bossuet  seeks 
to  show  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  kindness  and 
the  rigour  of  God,  the  tenderness  and  severity  of 
Jesus.  He  begins  by  showing  Jesus  moved  to  pity 
when  he  enters  the  city  that  is  about  to  betray  him, 
and  weeping  over  it;  then  he  shows  him  irritated  and 
implacable,  avenging  himself,  or  letting  his  Father 
avenge  him  on  the  walls  and  on  the  children  of  that 
same  Jerusalem.  This  sermon  preached,  as  Bossuet 
said  in  closing  it,  "as  God  has  inspired  it  in  me," 
has  something  youthful,  eager,  bold  in  places,  rash, 
and  even  strange.  He  tries  to  represent  in  the  same 
discourse  the  merciful  Saviour  and  the  inexorable 
Saviour,  the  tender  heart  and  the  angry  heart  of  Jesus: 
"Listen  first,"  he  says,  "to  the  sweet,  benign  voice 
of  this  Lamb  without  spot,  and  then  you  shall  hear 
the  roarings  of  the  victorious  Lion  born  of  the  tribe 
ofjudah:  that  is  the  subject  of  this  discourse.    .    .    ." 

More  might  be  said  on  this  first  period  of  Bossuet's 
life,  both  at  Metz  and  in  Paris.     We  might  inquire. 


3Bos5uet.  225 

for  instance,  what  his  personal  appearance  was  in 
his  youth,  at  the  age  when  he  delivered  these  ser- 
mons, already  so  powerful,  with  a  precocious  au- 
thority through  which  shone  a  visible  inspiration, 
embellished,  so  to  speak,  with  a  lingering  nafveie. 
We  are  told  that  Nature  had  endowed  him  with  a 
noble  face;  the  fire  of  his  mind  shone  in  his  glance; 
the  characteristics  of  his  genius  permeated  his  speech. 
It  is  sufficient  to  consult  his  portrait  in  the  Louvre, 
painted  in  old  age  by  Rigaud,  from  which  to  form  a 
true  idea  of  what  he  must  have  been  in  his  youth. 
The  Abbe  Le  Dieu,  in  his  "Memoirs,  etc.,  on  the  Life 
and  Work  of  Bossuet,"  says  that  "his  eyes  were 
gentle,  yet  piercing;  his  voice  seemed  always  to 
come  from  a  passionate  soul;  his  gestures  in  oration 
were  modest,  tranquil,  natural."  But,  better  still,  see 
his  bust  in  the  Louvre  by  Coysevox:  noble  head, 
splendid  carriage,  pride  without  assumption;  fore- 
head lofty  and  full,  the  seat  of  thought  and  majesty ; 
the  mouth  singularly  agreeable,  sensitive,  speaking 
even  in  repose;  a  straight  and  most  distinguished  pro- 
file: the  whole  with  an  expression  of  fire,  intelligence, 
and  kindness  —  a  countenance  most  worthy  of  man- 
hood, whether  he  is  made  to  speak  to  his  fellows  or 
to  gaze  into  heaven.  Take  from  that  face  its  wrinkles, 
shed  over  it  the  bloom  of  life  and  youth,  dream  of 
a  young  and  adolescent  Bossuet;  but  do  not  describe 
him  too  minutely  to  yourself,  lest  you  miss  the  severity 
of  the  subject  and  the  respect  that  is  due  to  him. 

VOL.   II. — 15. 


226  3Bossuet» 

When  Bossuet  quitted  Metz  to  settle  in  Paris  the 
effect  was  shown  instantly  in  his  eloquence;  and  to 
read  his  productions  of  that  period  is  like  passing 
from  one  climate  to  another.  "In  following  Bossuet's 
discourses  in  their  chronological  order,"  says  the 
Abbe  Vaillant,  "we  see  the  old  words  fall  succes- 
sively like  the  leaves  in  autumn."  Antiquated  or  trivial 
expressions,  repulsive  images,  lapses  of  good  taste, 
which  were  less  the  fault  of  Bossuet's  youth  than 
of  that  whole  epoch  of  transition  which  preceded  the 
great  reign,  disappeared,  leaving  the  new  language 
free,  unconstrained,  sudden,  unexpected,  never  to 
recoil,  as  he  said  of  Saint  Paul,  "before  the  glorious 
degradations  of  Christianity,"  but  ready  to  glorify 
magnificently  its  combats,  its  spiritual  government, 
and  its  triumphs.  Frequently  called  upon,  after  the 
year  1662,  to  preach  before  the  Court,  having  also  to 
speak  in  churches  or  before  the  great  communities  of 
Paris,  Bossuet  acquired  immediately  the  language  in 
use,  all  the  while  keeping  and  developing  his  own 
and  stripping  himself  of  that  of  the  provinces.  The 
provinces,  however,  through  a  discipline  and  practice 
of  six  years,  had  trained  and  inured  him;  the  Court 
merely  polished  him  as  much  and  no  more  than  he 
needed.  He  was  a  finished  orator  at  thirty-four  years 
of  age.  During  eight  or  nine  years,  from  1660  to 
1669,  he  was  the  great  preacher  in  vogue,  and  in 
renown. 

Bossuet's  talent  was  anterior  in  origin  and  formation 


JBossuet.  227 

to  the  period  of  Louis  XIV,  but  he  owed  much  of  its 
completion  and  perfection  to  the  young  king.  More 
than  once  attempts  have  been  made  to  deprive  Louis 
XIV  of  his  species  of  useful  influence  and  propitious 
ascendency  over  what  is  called  his  epoch;  such  at- 
tempts are  unjust  and  exclusive.  Bossuet  in  particu- 
lar, as  1  think,  shows  us  a  great  and  striking  example 
of  the  sort  of  benefits  that  the  epoch  of  Louis  XIV 
owed  to  the  young  star  of  the  king  from  the  day 
of  its  rising.  Treated  with  distinction  by  Anne  of 
Austria,  and  becoming,  towards  the  end,  her  chosen 
preacher,  Bossuet  at  first  indulged  in  certain  luxuries 
of  intellect,  certain  diffuse  and  subtile  discriminations 
that  belonged  to  the  taste  of  the  day.  Delivering  be- 
fore the  queen-mother  in  1658  (or  59)  his  "  Panegyric 
of  Saint  Teresa,"  Bossuet,  excited  perhaps  by  the 
choice  style  of  the  Spanish  saint,  and  carefully  devel- 
oping a  passage  in  Tertullian  which  says  that  Jesus, 
before  dying,  desired  to  "sate  himself  with  the  de- 
lights of  patience,"  does  not  shrink  from  adding  : 
"Would  you  not  say,  Christians,  according  to  the 
words  of  that  father,  the  whole  life  of  the  Saviour  was 
a  feast  at  which  the  meats  were  tortures?  strange 
feast!  but  one  which  Jesus  deemed  worthy  of  his 
taste.  His  death  sufficed  for  our  salvation,  but  his 
death  did  not  suffice  to  quench  that  marvellous  ap- 
petite that  he  had  to  suffer  for  us."  There,  assuredly, 
is  the  bet  esprit  in  vogue  during  the  Regency.  But 
after  he  was  summoned  to  preach  before  the  young 


228  :Bos6uet. 

king  he  quickly  learned  to  correct  such  sayings  and 
repress  them. 

When  Louis  XIV  heard  Bossuet  for  the  first  time  he 
liked  him  much  and  did  a  charming  thing  for  him, 
very  worthy  of  a  youthful  monarch  who  still  had  his 
mother:  he  sent  a  letter  to  Bossuet's  father  at  Metz, 
' '  to  congratulate  him  on  having  such  a  son. "  Whoso 
does  not  feel  that  delicacy  is  not  fitted  to  feel  the  sort 
of  influence  that  the  young  king  had  over  the  vast 
imagination  and  sound  mind  of  Bossuet.  Louis  XIV 
had,  at  all  times,  the  fit  and  proper  word,  just  as  he 
had,  they  say,  correctness  and  a  sense  of  symmetry 
in  the  glance  of  his  eye.  He  had  in  him,  and  he  had 
about  him,  something  that  warned  others  not  to  be 
excessive,  and  to  force  nothing.  Bossuet,  speaking 
in  his  presence,  felt  that  in  the  matter  of  elevated 
taste  he  had  before  him  a  regulator.  I  wish  to  say 
nothing  but  what  is  incontestable:  Louis  XIV,  very 
young,  was  useful  to  Bossuet  in  giving  him  propor- 
tion and  all  Its  justesse,  accuracy.  The  great  and  con- 
secrated orator  continued  to  owe  to  himself  alone  and 
to  the  spirit  that  filled  him  his  inspirations  and  his 
originality. 

Here  is  a  fact  that  can  be  verified:  in  the  series  of 
Bossuet's  Sermons  that  have  been  classified,  not  in 
the  chronological  order  in  which  he  composed  them, 
but  according  to  the  order  of  the  Christian  year,  be- 
ginning with  All  Saint's  day  and  the  Advent  and  end- 
ing with  Whitsunday,  if  you  desire  to  put  your  hand 


36ossuet.  229 

with  certainty  on  one  of  the  finest  and  most  irre- 
proachable, take  any  one  of  those  that  are  labelled  : 
"  Preached  before  the  King." 

it  is  true  to  say  that  in  all  the  sermons  or  discourses 
delivered  by  Bossuet  from  1661  to  1669  and  later, 
there  are  wonderful  passages,  far  more  moving  to 
readers  of  any  class  than  the  sermons  of  Bourdaloue 
so  much  read  in  these  days.  In  the  "  Panegyric  of 
Saint  Paul,"  how  he  takes  possession  of  the  subject 
in  its  depths,  by  its  most  secret  and  supernatural 
side!  Paul  is  "the  more  powerful  because  he  feels 
himself  weak  "  ;  it  is  his  weakness  that  makes  his 
strength.  He  is  the  Apostle,  without  art,  of  a  hidden 
wisdom,  an  incomprehensible  wisdom,  that  shocks 
and  scandalises,  but  into  which  he  will  put  no  deceit 
or  artifice : 

"He  goes  into  that  polished  Greece,  mother  of  philosophers  and 
orators;  and,  in  spite  of  the  resistance  of  that  world,  he  there  estab- 
lishes more  churches  than  Plato  gained  disciples  by  an  eloquence  that 
was  called  divine.  He  pushes  still  farther  his  conquests;  he  casts 
down  at  the  feet  of  the  Saviour  the  majesty  of  the  Roman  fasces  in 
the  person  of  a  pro-consul  ;  he  forces  Rome  herself  to  hear  his  voice, 
and  the  day  is  coming  when  that  mistress-city  will  feel  herself  more 
honoured  by  an  epistle  from  Paul's  hand  addressed  to  her  citizens, 
than  by  all  the  famous  harangues  she  has  heard  from  her  Cicero. 

"Whence  comes  it,  Christian?  It  is  because  Paul  has  means  for 
persuasion  that  Greece  could  never  teach  and  Rome  has  never  learned. 
A  supernatural  power,  taking  pleasure  in  lifting  up  that  which  the 
proud  despise,  instils  itself  and  mingles  in  the  majestic  simplicity  of  his 
words.  Hence  it  is  that  we  admire  in  his  wonderful  Epistles  a  certain 
virtue,  more  than  human,  which  persuades  against  all  rules — or  rather 
which  does  not  persuade  so  much  as  it  takes  captive  the  understand- 
ing: which  flatters  not  the  ear,  but  sends  its  blows  straight  to  the 


230  3BO£5SUet. 

heart.  Just  as  we  see  a  great  river  restraining,  as  it  flows  across  a 
plain,  the  violent  and  impetuous  force  it  has  acquired  in  the  moun- 
tains whence  it  draws  its  origin,  so  this  celestial  power,  contained  in 
the  writings  of  Saint  Paul,  preserves,  even  in  the  simplicity  of  that 
style,  all  the  vigour  it  brought  with  it  from  the  Heaven  whence  it 
came." 

Let  us  now  take  other  sermons  preached  before  the 
Court:  that  on  Ambition  (1666),  on  Honour  (1666),  on 
the  Love  of  Pleasures  (1662);  beauties  of  the  same 
order  shine  throughout  them.  On  ambition  and  on 
honour,  he  says,  facing  Louis  XiV,  all  that  could  warn 
him  of  the  present  and  future  idolatry  of  which  he 
was  the  object,  if  any  warning  could  avail.  He  seeks 
to  show  by  the  examples  of  Nero  and  Nebuchadnez- 
zar, "what  can  be  done  in  the  human  soul  by  the 
terrible  thought  of  nothing  being  above  his  head.  It 
is  then,"  he  says,  "that  immoderate  desires  grow 
daily  more  and  more  subtile,  and  double,  if  I  may 
say  so,  their  stake.  Thence  come  unknown  vices 
.  .  .  "  And  on  the  man,  small  in  himself  and 
ashamed  of  his  smallness,  struggling  to  increase  him- 
self, to  magnify  himself,  who  imagines  that  he  can 
incorporate  within  him  all  that  he  amasses  and  ac- 
quires: "Be  he  count,  be  he  seigneur,"  he  says, 
"  possessor  of  great  wealth,  master  of  many  persons, 
minister  of  all  the  councils,  and  so  on;  let  him  mag- 
nify himself  as  much  as  he  pleases,  and  yet  it  takes 
but  one  death  to  cast  him  down.  ..."  The 
characteristic  of  Bossuet  is  to  seize  at  a  first  glance 
the  great  ideas  that  are  fixed  bounds  and  necessary 


Bossuet.  231 

limits  of  things,  suppressing  the  intervening  spaces 
where  the  external  childhood  of  man  forgets  and 
deludes  itself. 

Lest  it  be  said  that  I  seek  in  him  only  his  lessons  to 
the  great  and  powerful,  let  me  say  that  in  that  same 
sermon  on  Honour,  where  he  enumerates  and  de- 
nounces the  different  sorts  of  worldly  vanity,  he  does 
not  forget  the  men  of  letters,  the  poets,  those  who, 
after  their  fashion,  grasp  at  renown  and  empire: 

"They  think  themselves  the  wisest  who  are  vain  in  their  gifts  of 
intellect — learned  men,  men  of  literature,  the  wits  of  the  day.  In 
truth,  Christians,  they  are  worthy  to  be  distinguished  from  others,  for 
they  are  the  finest  ornaments  of  the  world.  But  who  can  endure 
them  when,  as  soon  as  they  are  conscious  of  a  little  talent,  they  weary 
all  ears  with  their  deeds  and  their  sayings,  and  because  they  know 
how  to  put  words  together,  measure  a  verse,  or  round  a  period,  think 
they  have  the  right  to  make  themselves  listened  to  forever  and 
sovereignly  to  decide  all  matters?  O  justness  in  life!  O  equality  in 
manners  and  morals!  O  moderation  in  the  passions!  rich  and  true 
adornments  of  reasonable  nature,  when  shall  we  learn  to  esteem 
you  rightly  ?  " 

Eternal  art  of  Poesy,  principle,  maintainer,  and 
higher  law  of  true  talents,  here  we  behold  you,  es- 
tablished, as  it  were  by  the  way,  in  Bossuet's  sermon 
at  the  very  moment  when  Boileau  in  his  "Satires"  is 
striving  to  find  you.  But  how  much  higher  up  springs 
the  source,  and  from  what  surer  regions  in  Bossuet 
than  in  the  Horaces  and  Boileaus! 

During  the  first  years  of  his  life  in  Paris  he  began 
his  subsequently  famous  series  of  Funeral  Orations. 
We  have  the  one  he  pronounced  over  Pere  Bourgoing, 


232  JSossuet. 

the  general  of  the  Oratoire,  and  over  Nicolas  Cornet, 
grandmaster  of  Navarre,  and  the  cherished  master  of 
Bossuet  in  particular.  There  are  beauties  in  both 
these  discourses  ;  in  that  over  Nicolas  Cornet  the 
question  of  Grace  and  Free  Will,  which  were  then 
agitating  the  Church  under  the  names  of  Jansenist  and 
Molinist,  are  admirably  defined;  and  Bossuet,  by  the 
liberal  manner  in  which  he  states  them,  shows  to 
what  point  he  is  aloof  from  parties  and  soars  above 
them.  Bossuet  needed  ampler  and  loftier  subjects; 
while  awaiting  them  he  magnifies  and  exalts  those  he 
treats,  but  we  feel  the  disproportion.  He  thundered 
a  little  in  the  void  on  such  occasions,  or,  rather,  in 
two  narrow  a  space:  his  voice  was  too  strong  for  the 
building. 

He  must  have  been  more  at  his  ease  and  felt  him- 
self more  at  large  in  speaking  of  Anne  of  Austria, 
whose  Funeral  Oration  he  pronounced  in  1667;  and 
here  is  a  singular  thing:  that  discourse  in  which  Bos- 
suet must  have  given  free  course  to  the  gratitude  of 
his  heart  and  to  a  display  of  historical  magnificence, 
was  never  printed! 

The  death,  in  1669,  of  the  Queen  of  England  [Henri- 
etta Maria,  daughter  of  Henri  IV  and  wife  of  Charles  I] 
gave  him  the  most  majestic  and  grandiose  of  sub- 
jects. He  needed  the  fall  and  restoration  of  thrones, 
the  revolutions  of  empires,  all  fates  collected  in  a 
single  life  and  weighing  down  a  single  head,  as  the 
eagle   needs   the   vast   profundity   of   the   skies   and 


JBossuet.  2S3 

beneath  him  the  abysses  and  the  storms  of  ocean. 
But  let  us  here  note  another  service  done  by  Louis 
XIV  and  his  reign  to  Bossuet.  He  might  have  found 
such  great  subjects  during  the  disastrous  epochs  of 
the  Fronde  and  the  civil  wars,  but  they  would  have 
come  to  him  scattered  and,  in  some  sort,  without 
limits.  Louis  XIV  and  his  reign  gave  him  the  frame 
in  which  these  great  subjects  were  limited  and  fixed, 
but  not  dwarfed.  In  the  august,  well-defined  epoch 
in  the  bosom  of  which  he  spoke,  Bossuet,  without 
losing  aught  of  his  own  expanse,  or  of  the  freedom 
and  boldness  of  his  glance  into  the  distance,  found 
around  him  on  all  sides  this  point  of  support,  this 
security,  this  encouragement,  and  also  a  subtile  warn- 
ing of  which  talent  and  genius  itself  have  need. 
"No  doubt  Bossuet  put  his  trust,  first  of  all,  in  Heaven, 
but  as  an  orator  his  authority  and  calm  force  were 
doubled  by  the  sense  that  beneath  him,  and  at  the 
moment  that  he  pressed  it  with  his  foot,  the  soil 
of  France  no  longer  trembled. 

All  those  who  have  written  on  Bossuet  have  made 
ample  and  continual  use  of  the  Memoires  et  Journal 
sur  la  Vie  et  les  Ouvrages  de  Bossuet,  by  the  Abbe  Le 
Dieu.  A  first  and  most  natural  inquiry  is  to  know  if 
those  Memoirs  answer  to  the  expectation  formed  of 
them.  I  shall  say  at  once  that  they  do  so  only  in 
part;  but,  such  as  they  are,  they  will  fix  with  truth, 
precision,  and  no  exaggeration  whatever,  in  the  minds 
of  all    readers   who   will  allow  them  to  do  so,  the 


234  JBossuet. 

lineaments  of  that  noble  and  upright  figure  of  Bos- 
suet.  Its  greatness,  towards  the  end,  may  suffer  a 
little;  I  think  it  does,  but  its  goodness  gains. 

Let  us,  however,  distinguish  a  little:  there  are  two 
divisions  in  Abbe  Le  Dieu's  work  on  Bossuet:  the 
Memoirs  and  the  Journal.  The  Memoirs,  written 
shortly  after  Bossuet's  death,  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment  as  it  were,  form  a  broad  and  animated 
narrative,  a  picture  of  the  life,  the  talents,  the  virtues 
of  the  great  bishop.  In  this  work  the  Abbe  Le  Dieu 
takes  pains;  he  writes  as  if  in  view  of  the  public; 
his  style  is  easy,  it  has  development  and  happy  turns 
of  phrase;  we  feel  the  man  who  lived  with  Bossuet 
and  who  speaks  of  him  worthily,  with  admiration, 
with  emotion.  In  the  Journal,  on  the  other  hand, 
written  for  himself  alone  and  to  serve  merely  as 
matter  for  recollection,  the  abbe  shows  himself  al- 
ways filled  with  admiration  and  respect  for  the  per- 
sonage to  whom  he  belongs,  but  his  language  does 
not  aid  those  ideas;  his  revelations  are  of  all  kinds 
and  not  chosen;  they  are  full  of  trivialities  and  plati- 
tudes that  we  regret  to  see  there.  The  Abbe  Le  Dieu 
was  a  worthy  ecclesiastic,  hard  working,  author  him- 
self of  several  works  on  theological  subjects;  he  was 
attached  to  Bossuet  in  the  year  1684,  and  remained 
with  him  for  twenty  years  (the  last  twenty  years  of 
the  great  prelate's  life)  in  the  capacity  of  private  secre- 
tary, and  with  the  title  of  canon  of  his  cathedral 
church. 


3Bossuet.  23s 

Le  Dieu's  Memoirs,  very  different  from  the  Journal, 
are  easy  to  read  and  copious;  they  show  us  Bos- 
suet  in  his  race  and  genealogy,  his  childhood  and 
early  education,  his  natural  and  continued  growth. 
If  any  one  ever  seemed  born  to  be  a  priest  in  the 
noblest  and  worthiest  sense  of  the  word,  it  was  he. 
His  pure  childhood  was  followed  by  a  pious  ado- 
lescence and  a  youth  already  consecrated.  Eliakim 
had  but  to  grow,  to  continue  himself  in  order  to  be- 
come a  Jehoiada.  The  study  of  belles-lettres,  which 
at  first  occupied  him  and  in  which  he  excelled,  subor- 
dinated itself  in  his  mind  as  soon  as  he  had  cast  his 
eyes  on  the  Bible,  which  happened  to  him  in  his 
rhetoric  year.  That  moment,  when  he  met  with  and 
read  for  the  first  time  a  Latin  Bible,  and  the  impres- 
sion of  joy  and  light  that  he  received  from  it,  remained 
always  present  with  him  through  life;  and  he  spoke 
of  it  in  his  last  hours.  He  was,  it  may  be  said,  re- 
vealed to  himself;  he  became  the  child  and  soon  the 
man  of  Scripture  and  the  Sacred  Word.  The  wonder- 
ful faculties  he  had  received,  and  which  early  made 
themselves  known,  found  their  form  and  satisfaction, 
without  effort,  in  the  grave  exercises  that  filled  the 
life  of  a  young  priest  and  a  young  teacher  —  themes, 
controversies,  sermons,  conferences;  he  put  all  his 
senses  and  his  beliefs  into  them,  and  in  them  he  found 
his  fruition. 

What  strikes  me  most  in  the  traits  that  the  Abbe  Le 
Dieu  has  caught  and  collected  of  the  early  life  and 


■236  Bossuet. 

studies  of  Bossuet,  is  a  first  sign,  a  characteristic  al- 
ready manifest  of  the  future  great  bishop  —  something 
facile  and  superior,  which  announces  itself  and  takes 
position  without  struggle,  without  confusion,  without 
interruption,  yet  without  eagerness;  it  is  the  most 
straightforward  vocation  that  can  be  conceived;  his 
was  the  least  struggling  or  thwarted  soul  that  ever 
reached  so  high  a  region.  He  never  ceased  for  a 
single  day  to  be  in  his  order  and  to  walk  his  path. 

Bossuet's  success  in  the  pulpits  of  Paris,  when  he 
went  there  periodically  and  rather  frequently  from 
Metz,  are  described  by  the  Abbe  Le  Dieu  with  a 
vivacity  and  grace  we  should  hardly  expect  to  find 
in  a  mere  record  of  sermons.  These  discourses,  so 
praised  by  contemporaries  that  they  came  to  be  per- 
sonified by  the  first  words  of  their  texts,  always  very 
happily  chosen,  the  Depositum  custodi,  preached  be- 
fore the  queen-mother,  and  the  Surrexii  Paulus,  are 
made  present  and  distinct  to  us,  each  with  its  particu- 
lar physiognomy.  The  sermon  called  La  yocatioti, 
preached  with  the  view  of  confirming  the  conversion 
of  M.  de  Turenne  (1668),  was  mentioned  by  the  Car- 
melites, in  whose  chapel  it  was  delivered,  as  a  "ser- 
mon of  exquisite  beauty,"  and  the  explanations  of  the 
Epistles,  made  in  their  convent  parlour  about  the 
same  time,  are  said  by  them  to  have  been  of  "en- 
chanting beauty."  It  should  be  noticed  that  all  such 
praises,  which  recur  perpetually  under  the  Abbe  Le 
Dieu's  pen,  are  to  the  effect  that  the  man  whom  they 


IBossiiet.  237 

called  the  "Angel  of  Meaux  "  was,  as  an  orator,  es- 
sentially remarkable  for  a  character  of  sweetness  and 
unction. 

His  Funeral  Orations,  now  the  most  read  of  his 
works,  have  accustomed  us  to  think  chiefly  of  his 
splendid  outbursts  and  his  thunder,  although  many  of 
those  Orations  (that  on  the  Princess  Palatine,  for  ex- 
ample) move  us  more  gently  and  bring  tears;  but,  in 
general,  the  first  things  we  picture  to  ourselves  when 
we  think  of  Bossuet's  eloquence  are  its  thunderbolts. 
His  theological  duel  with  Fenelon,  and  the  vigour  he 
put  into  refuting  him  to  the  end  and  confounding  him, 
have  not  lessened  this  idea  of  him,  and  have  even 
made  him  pass  for  hard.  He  was  not  at  all  so  in 
other  matters.  In  the  affair  with  Fenelon,  Bossuet 
filled  his  office  of  teacher  and  incorruptible  guardian 
of  the  truth;  which,  indeed,  is  a  different,  but  not  less 
essential  aspect  of  the  great  mind,  the  wholly  sacer- 
dotal soul  of  Bossuet.  I  am  speaking  now  of  the 
orator  only. 

From  the  mass  of  testimony  collected  by  Le  Dieu, 
there  is  no  means  of  doubting  that  the  usual  character 
of  Bossuet's  discourses,  such  as  he  made  them  with 
great  outflow  of  heart  and  lively  application  of  each 
word  to  his  audience,  was  to  be  touching,  to  open  the 
hearts  of  all  as  he  opened  his  own,  to  bring  tears  ;  in 
short,  to  persuade — the  orator's  great  object.  "  How 
is  it,  monseigneur,  that  you  make  yourself  so  touch- 
ing.?" said  the  Mesdames  de  Luynes,  those  two  noble. 


238  3Bossuet. 

and  saintly  nuns  of  Jouarre.  "You  turn  us  as  it 
pleases  you,  and  we  cannot  resist  the  charm  of  your 
words."  Bossuet  much  preferred  to  preach  the  Word 
of  God,  in  its  simplicity  and  bareness,  to  the  delivery 
of  his  celebrated  Funeral  Orations.  ' '  He  did  not  like, " 
says  Le  Dieu,  "the  latter  work,  which  is  very  little 
useful,  though  it  may  shed  edification."  Feeling  that 
this  display  and  paraphernalia  of  solemn  eloquence 
fatigued  him  to  no  purpose,  except  that  of  reputation 
and  fame,  he  believed  he  did  wrong  to  his  own  flock 
to  continue  it;  therefore,  after  paying  a  debt  of  grati- 
tude to  the  memory  of  the  Prince  de  Conde,  to  which, 
indeed,  friendship  obliged  him,  he  publicly  announced 
that  on  that  side  his  career  was  closed,  reserving 
henceforth  all  his  inward  vigour  for  the  service  of  his 
own  people. 

He  was  then  at  the  age  of  which  Cicero  speaks, 
when  the  Roman  orator  says  that  his  eloquence  feels 
that  it  whitens :  qiium  ipsa  oratio  jam  nostra  canesce- 
ret ;  he  was  in  haste  to  employ  all  his  maturity  and 
sweetness  for  the  Christian  family  entrusted  to  him. 
He  bound  himself  to  preach  at  Meaux  whenever  he 
officiated  pontifically,  "and  never,"  says  Le  Dieu, 
"did  any  matter,  however  urgent  it  might  be,  pre- 
vent him  from  going  to  celebrate  the  great  festivals 
with  his  people  and  proclaim  to  them  the  Sacred  Word. 
At  such  times  a  father,  not  a  prelate,  spoke  to  his 
children,  and  the  children  made  themselves  docile  and 
obedient  to  the  voice  of  their  common  father." 


Bossuet  239 

Bossuet  had  all  styles  of  eloquence;  and  this  won- 
derful facility  of  speech,  born  of  an  inward  source 
and  fed  by  study  and  doctrine,  together  with  the 
practice  he  had  so  early  in  the  employments  of  the 
priesthood,  explain  to  a  certain  point  the  tranquil 
composure,  the  precocious  stability  of  a  mind  that 
felt  it  had  only  to  continue  its  straight  course,  for  that 
it  was  which  would  lead  him  to  Jerusalem. 

There  are  a  dozen  pages,  among  others  in  the  Mem- 
moirs  of  the  Abbe  Le  Dieu,  which  I  recommend  to  my 
readers;  they  are  those  in  which  he  relates,  from 
Bossuet's  own  lips,  having  frequently  heard  him  speak 
on  the  subject,  the  manner  in  which  the  great  orator 
conceived  of  eloquence  in  the  pulpit  and  practised  it. 
Here  are  the  abbe's  words,  or  rather  those  of  Bossuet 
himself,  for  Le  Dieu  is  obviously  only  his  interpreter 
and  secretary: 

"  Considerations  of  persons  present,  place,  and  time  determined  his 
choice  of  subject.  Like  the  Fathers,  he  adapted  his  instructions  or 
his  reproofs  to  present  needs;  that  is  why,  throughout  Advent  or 
Lent,  he  could  not  prepare  himself  in  the  interval  between  one  sermon 
and  the  next.  For  that  reason  he  never  took  upon  himself  those  great 
Lents  when  a  sermon  must  be  preached  daily.  He  would  have  suc- 
cumbed and  been  exhausted  by  the  labour,  so  great  was  his  diligence 
and  his  utterance  eager.  When  at  work  he  threw  upon  paper  his 
plan,  his  text,  his  proofs,  in  French  or  Latin  indifferently,  without 
restraining  himself  as  to  words,  or  turns  of  expression,  or  imagery: 
otherwise,  as  he  was  heard  to  say  many  times,  the  action  would  have 
languished,  and  his  discourse  would  have  become  enervated. 

"  On  this  unformed  matter  he  meditated  deeply  on  the  morning  of 
the  day  when  he  had  to  speak;  usually  he  wrote  no  more,  in  order 
not  to  distract  his  mind,  because  his  imagination  always  went  much 
faster  than  his  hand  could  go. 


240  3BOS5Uet. 

"  Master  of  all  the  thoughts  that  were  present  in  his  mind,  he  fixed 
in  his  memory  even  the  expressions  that  he  meant  to  use;  then,  col- 
lecting himself  in  the  afternoon,  he  went  over  his  discourse  in  his 
head,  reading  it  with  the  eyes  of  his  mind  as  though  it  had  been  upon 
paper;  changing,  adding,  cutting  out,  as  if  pen  in  hand.  Finally, 
when  he  was  in  the  pulpit  and  pronouncing  the  words,  he  followed 
the  impression  made  upon  his  audience,  and  suddenly,  effacing  volun- 
tarily from  his  mind  what  he  had  meditated,  he  fastened  to  the  present 
thought,  and  drove  home  the  emotion  through  which  he  saw  upon  the 
faces  before  him  the  touched  or  shaken  hearts." 

Such  Vv^ere  the  meditated  improvisations  from  which 
Bossuet  drew  his  first  great  sermons,  and  to  which 
he  continued  faithful  throughout  the  whole  course  of 
his  pastoral  homilies.  Bossuet,  unlike  Bourdaloue  or 
Massillon,  never  repeated  his  Lenten  or  Advent  ad- 
dresses; he  renewed  himself  constantly;  he  was  in- 
capable of  monotony,  of  uniformity,  even  in  speaking 
of  that  which  did  not  vary;  he  wanted  in  his  most 
regular  teachings  a  freshness  of  life,  always  present, 
always  to  be  felt;  nothing  of  the  craft,  the  profession; 
he  wanted  action,  emotion  that  was  wholly  sincere; 
he  needed  that  his  whole  soul,  his  imagination,  wooed 
by  the  Spirit  from  on  high,  should  find  their  place  and 
spread  themselves  over  all  on  each  new  occasion;  he 
could  not  endure  in  sacred  oratory  that  words  and 
emotions  should  be  arranged  and  regulated  before- 
hand; it  was  no  longer,  he  thought,  pouring  from  the 
source  of  living  waters. 

Here  is  a  remarkable  fact:  even  when  he  composed 
his  Funeral  Orations,  "  in  which  there  was  much  nar- 
rative and  little  to  change,"  or  his  discourses  on  doc- 


Bossuet.  241 

trine,  where  the  explanation  of  dogma  should  be  clear 
and  concise,  "he  wrote  all,"  says  Le  Dieu,  "on  a 
paper  with  two  columns,  with  several  different  ex- 
pressions of  the  great  emotions  placed  side  by  side, 
reserving  to  himself  a  choice  in  the  heat  of  utterance, 
to  keep,  he  said,  liberty  of  action  when  following  his 
effect  upon  his  auditors;  thus  turning  to  their  profit 
the  very  plaudits  they  bestowed."  The  abbe  shows 
him  to  us  at  Meaux  before  he  went  up  into  the  pulpit 
and  after  he  came  down: 

"On  his  days  for  preaching,  after  composing  his  ideas  in  his  study 
by  reading  Holy  Scripture,  or  Saint  Augustine,  that  grand  and  inex- 
haustible receptacle  of  Christian  doctrine,  he  kept  himself  during 
divine  service  in  quiet  meditation  and  continual  prayer;  then,  after  a 
few  minutes  when  he  shut  himself  up  alone  before  mounting  the  pul- 
pit, he  began  to  pour  out  his  soul  through  his  lips  and  the  stream  had 
only  to  flow.  .  .  .  When  he  had  finished,  ai  d  as  if  to  shelter 
himself  from  plaudits,  he  returned  at  once  to  his  h'use  and  remained 
there  hidden,  giving  glory  to  God  for  his  gifts  and  his  mercies,  without 
saying  a  single  word  either  of  his  preaching  or  the  success  it  had  had, 
.  .  .  And  the  remark  to  be  made  as  to  this,"  adds  Le  Dieu,  "  is  on 
its  true  and  sure  character,  for  he  did  the  same  on  all  occasions.  He 
considered  himself  as  the  organ,  the  channel  of  the  Word,  happy  if  he 
were  the  first  to  profit  by  it,  and  never,  above  all,  being  elated  by 
his  act." 

It  was  in  virtue  of  that  same  principle  of  modesty, 
and  of  just  and  rigorous  distinction  between  the  man 
and  the  deed,  that  on  his  death-bed,  when  the  vicar  of 
Vareddes  expressed  astonishment  that  he  should  wish 
to  consult  him,  he  to  whom  God  had  given  such  great 
and  vivid  light,  he  answered:  "Undeceive  yourself; 
God  gives  it  to  a  man  for  others,  often  leaving  him  in 
darkness  because  of  his  own  conduct." 

VOL.    II. 16. 


242  JBOSSUCt. 

His  perpetual  meditation  on  Holy  Scripture,  espe- 
cially after  he  felt  that  the  end  of  his  life  was  near,  was 
in  keeping  with  his  inward  spirit: 

"  He  had  taken  a  great  devotion  to  reciting  frequently  the  22nd 
Psalm,  '  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?  O  thou 
my  succour,  haste  thee  to  help  me.'  He  often  went  to  sleep,  and 
woke  up,  still  meditating  on  that  Psalm,  which  he  called  '  The  Psalm 
of  death,  the  Psalm  of  abandonment.'  " 

"Monsieur,  I  have  always  thought  you  an  honest 
man,"  said  an  unbeliever  on  his  death-bed  to  Bossuet, 
"I  am  now  about  to  die;  speak  to  me  frankly,  I  have 
confidence  in  you:  What  do  you  believe  about  re- 
ligion?" "That  it  is  a  sure  thing,  and  that  I  have 
never  had  any  doubt  of  it,"  replied  Bossuet;  and  the 
sincerity  of  those  words  strikes  us  in  all  that  we  read 
of  him  to-day. 

There  was  nothing  of  the  man  of  letters  in  Bossuet, 
using  that  term  in  its  ordinary  meaning;  that  is  to 
say,  he  never  wrote  merely  to  write,  he  had  no  crav- 
ing to  be  printed;  he  generally  wrote  only  when 
forced  to  do  so  by  some  motive  of  public  utility;  to 
instruct  or  to  refute;  and  if  the  motive  ceased,  he 
suppressed,  or,  at  any  rate,  he  put  away  what  he  had 
written  in  a  drawer.  "Nothing  was  great  in  his 
eyes  but  defence  of  the  Church  and  religion."  Such, 
indeed,  he  appears  to  us,  more  and  more,  in  the  pic- 
ture made  of  him  by  the  Abbe  Le  Dieu,  and  such  he 
continued  to  his  death. 

The   years   when    he   was   tutor  to   the   Dauphin 


Bossuet.  243 

[Monseigneur,  son  of  Louis  XIV],  during  wliich  he 
returned  to  mundane  studies  in  order  to  teach  them, 
were  those  in  which  he  occupied  himself  most  with 
belles-lettres,  properly  so-called.  We  find  him  re- 
reading Virgil,  and  reading  Homer  with  special  enthu- 
siasm. On  these  points  the  Abbe  Le  Dieu  has  not, 
perhaps,  all  the  exactne,ss  and  knowledge  of  detail 
that  one  desires;  but  one  thing,  at  least,  is  very  mani- 
fest, namely:  that  profane  literature,  in  taking  at  that 
time  a  large  place  in  Bossuet's  studies,  hindered  no 
others  and  encroached  on  none;  its  limits  were  fixed 
from  the  beginning;  although  we  are  told  that  he 
sometimes  recited  Homer  in  his  sleep,  so  much  had 
certain  passages  struck  him  the  evening  before;  yet 
he  never  felt  in  such  reading  that  buoyant  poetic 
intoxication  which  in  the  soul  and  the  charmed  imagi- 
nation of  Fenelon  produced  Te'le'maque.  Bossuet,  in 
short,  remains  for  all  time  the  man  of  the  Word  of 
God;  he  loved  that  Word;  essentially,  he  loved  that 
only.  Isaiah,  the  Prophets,  the  Psalms,  even  the  Song 
of  Songs  —  those  were  his  chosen  reading,  for  ever 
dear;  on  them  he  was  happy  to  grow  old  and  die: 
Certe  in  his  consenescere,  his  immori,  summa  votorum 
est.  There  was  his  Hoc  erat  in  votis,  and,  as  old  age 
came  on,  he  permitted  no  diversion  to  this  final  occu- 
pation, the  only  one,  to  his  eyes,  worthy  of  the 
sanctuary. 

One  never  wearies  of  passing  and  repassing  before 
that  grand  figure,  which  presents  the  most  exact  con- 


244  :EBoBsuet. 

cordance  and  conformity  with  the  epoch  in  which  it 
appeared,  and  over  which  it  may  be  said  to  have 
reigned.  Bossuet  throughout  his  whole  life  walked 
with  his  face  uncovered;  nothing  in  him,  nothing  in 
his  actions  nor  in  his  thought  is  in  shadow;  he  was 
the  public  man  of  great  institutions  and  established 
order;  sometimes  their  organ,  sometimes  their  in- 
spires sometimes  the  censor,  accepted  by  every  one, 
or  the  conciliator  and  the  umpire.  He  was  the  most 
respected  man  of  those  times  in  the  Catholic  and 
Galilean  order,  and  wherever  speech  could  prevail. 
The  words  of  that  speech  have  come  down  to  us 
in  almost  all  their  beauty — what  more  can  we  desire  ? 


IX. 


245 


IX. 
Boileau. 

FOR  more  than  a  century  since  the  death  of 
Boileau,  long  and  continual  quarrels  have 
been  kept  up  over  him.  While  posterity  ac- 
cepted with  unanimous  acclamation  the  fame  of 
Corneille,  Moliere,  Racine,  and  La  Fontaine,  it  disputed 
constantly,  or  reviewed  with  singular  rigour  the  claims 
of  Boileau  to  poetic  genius;  and  it  was  not  the  fault  of 
Fontenelle,  d'Alembert,  Helvetius,  Condillac,  Marmon- 
tel,  and,  at  moments,  Voltaire  himself,  that  this  great 
classic  renown  was  not  impaired.  We  know  the  ground 
of  nearly  all  the  hostilities  and  antipathies  that  then  as- 
sailed it:  Boileau  had  no  "sensibility";  and  as  in  the 
eighteenth  century  sentiment  mingled  in  everything,  in  a 
description  by  Saint-Lambert,  in  a  tale  by  Crebillon,  Jr., 
in  a  philosophical  history  of  the  two  Indias,  the  fine 
ladies,  the  philosophers,  and  the  geometricians  took  a 
great  aversion  to  Boileau.  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  their 
epigrams  and  their  scoffing  smiles,  his  literary  fame 
held  good,  and  grew  firmer  day  by  day.  "  The  poet 
of  common-sense,   the  legislator  of  our  Parnassus," 

247 


248  Boileau. 

kept  his  upper  rank.  Voltaire's  mot,  "Don't  say 
harm  of  Nicolas,  it  brings  ill-luck,"  made  its  for- 
tune and  passed  into  a  proverb;  the  positive  ideas 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  Condillac's  philosophy, 
in  triumphing,  seemed  to  set  a  more  durable  seal  on 
the  fame  of  the  most  sensible,  most  logical,  and  most 
accurate  of  poets. 

But  it  was,  above  all,  when  a  new  school  of  litera- 
ture arose,  when  certain  minds,  few  at  first,  began  to 
put  forward  strange  and  unusual  theories,  and  to 
apply  them  in  their  work,  it  was  then  that  hatred 
of  innovations  brought  men  back  from  all  sides  to 
Boileau,  as  to  an  illustrious  ancestor,  to  whose  name 
they  could  rally  in  these  encounters.  Academicians 
rivalled  one  another  in  pronouncing  his  eulogy; 
editions  of  his  works  multiplied  ;  distinguished 
commentators  —  MM.  Viollet-le-Duc,  Amar,  Saint- 
Surin  —  environed  him  with  assortments  of  their 
taste  and  erudition;  M.  Daunou  in  particular,  that 
venerable  representative  of  literature  and  philosophy 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  gathered  around  Boileau, 
with  a  sort  of  piety,  all  the  facts,  all  the  judgments, 
all  the  apologies,  which  were  attached  to  so  great  a 
cause. 

This  time,  however,  the  combination  of  worthy 
efforts  did  not  sufficiently  protect  Boileau  against 
the  new  ideas,  at  first  obscure  and  decried,  but  grow- 
ing and  enlarging  under  the  clamours.  It  was  no 
longer  a  question,  as  in  the  eighteenth  century,    of 


NICOLAS  BOILEAU. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


Boileau.  249 

piquant  epigrams  and  satirical  personalities;  it  was  a 
strong  and  serious  attack  against  the  principles  and 
the  very  foundations  of  Boileau's  poetic  art;  it  was  a 
wholly  literary  examination  of  his  devices  and  his 
style;  a  severe  inquiry  on  the  qualities  of  a  poet,  and 
whether  they  were  or  were  not  in  him.  Epigrams 
were  no  longer  in  season;  so  many  had  been  made 
upon  him  formerly  that  it  became  bad  taste  to  repeat 
them.  I  shall  have  no  difficulty  in  avoiding  them  in 
the  few  pages  I  can  here  devote  to  him;  pages  in 
which  I  shall  not  seek  to  make  a  full  examination,  or 
to  offer  definitive  conclusions.  It  is  enough  to  talk 
freely  of  Boileau  with  my  readers,  to  study  him  in  his 
privacy,  to  look  at  him  in  detail,  according  to  our 
point  of  view  and  the  ideas  of  the  present  day,  pass- 
ing alternately  from  the  man  to  the  author,  from  the 
bourgeois  of  Auteuil  to  the  poet  of  Louis  the  Great, 
not  evading  the  great  questions  of  art  and  style,  eluci- 
dating them  possibly,  but  without  pretending  ever  to 
solve  them.  It  is  well,  at  each  new  literary  epoch,  to 
go  over  in  our  minds  and  revive  the  ideas  that  are 
represented  by  certain  names  that  have  become  sacra- 
mental, even  if  we  change  nothing  in  them,  very 
much  as  in  each  new  reign  new  coins  are  struck  on 
which  the  effigy  is  renewed  without  altering  the 
weight. 

In  these  days  a  lofty  and  philosophical  method  is 
introduced  into  all  the  branches  of  history.  When  it 
becomes  a  question  of  judging  the  life,  actions,  and 


250  JBoileau. 

writings  of  a  celebrated  man,  we  begin  by  examining 
and  describing  the  epoch  that  preceded  his  coming, 
the  society  that  received  him  into  its  midst,  the 
general  trend  of  minds;  we  observe  and  arrange,  as  a 
preliminary,  the  great  stage  on  which  the  personage 
is  to  play  his  part;  from  the  moment  he  appears,  all 
the  developments  of  the  force  within  him,  all  the 
obstacles,  all  the  repercussions  are  foreseen  and  ex- 
plained; and  from  this  harmonious  spectacle  there 
comes  by  degrees  into  the  soul  of  the  reader  a  peace- 
ful satisfaction  in  which  his  intellect  reposes.  This 
method  never  triumphs  with  more  complete  and 
brilliant  evidence  than  when  it  resuscitates  statesmen, 
conquerors,  theologians,  philosophers;  when  applied 
to  poets  and  artists,  men  of  retirement  and  solitude, 
exceptions  become  frequent,  and  one  has  need  to  be 
cautious.  For  while,  in  the  orders  of  other  ideas  — 
politics,  religion,  philosophy  —  each  man,  each  work, 
takes  its  own  rank,  all  make  sound  and  number,  the 
common  beside  the  passable,  and  the  passable  beside 
the  excellent,  in  art  nothing  counts  but  the  excellent; 
and  observe  that  the  excellent  in  art  may  always  be  an 
exception,  an  accident  of  nature,  a  caprice  of  heaven, 
a  gift  of  God.  You  may  make  fine  and  legitimate 
reasonings  and  deductions  on  prosaic  races  and 
epochs;  and  lo!  it  pleases  God  that  Pindar  should 
issue  from  Beotia  and  that  Andre  Chenier  should  be 
born  and  die  in  the  eighteenth  century.  No  doubt 
these    peculiar  aptitudes,    these    wonderful  faculties, 


:Boileau.  251 

received  at  birth,  co-ordinate  themselves  sooner  or  later 
with  the  epoch  into  which  they  are  cast,  and  are  sub- 
jected to  certain  lasting  impressions.  But  even  here, 
the  human  initiative  is  in  the  first  rank  and  is  less  sub- 
ject to  general  causes;  human  energy  modifies  and,  if 
I  may  so  express  it,  assimilates  things;  besides,  does 
it  not  suffice  an  artist,  in  order  to  accomplish  his  de- 
stiny, to  create  himself  a  haven,  however  obscure,  in 
the  great  movement  around  him,  to  find  some  forgot- 
ten corner  where  he  can  weave  his  web  in  peace,  or 
make  his  honey  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  when  we 
speak  of  an  artist  or  a  poet,  especially  a  poet  who 
does  not  represent  an  entire  epoch,  it  is  better  not  to 
complicate  his  history  with  too  vast  a  philosophical 
baggage,  but  to  keep,  in  the  beginning,  to  private 
character,  the  domestic  relations,  and  to  follow  the 
individual  closely  through  his  inner  self;  sure  that 
later,  when  we  know  him  well,  we  can  bring  him 
into  a  strong  light  and  confront  him  with  his  epoch. 
This  is  what  1  wish  to  do  very  simply  for  Boileau. 

Son  of  a  father  who  was  a  clerk  of  court  and  of 
lawyer  ancestors  (1636),  as  he  says  himself  in  his 
tenth  epistle,  Boileau  passed  his  childhood  and  his 
early  youth  in  the  rue  de  Jerusalem,  in  a  house  built 
in  the  days  of  Henri  IV;  having  thus  before  his  eyes 
the  bourgeois  life  and  the  life  of  the  law  courts.  He 
lost  his  mother  when  very  young,  the  family  was 
numerous,  and  his  father  much  occupied;  the  child 
was   left   to   himself  and   lodged  in  the  corner  of  a 


252  Bolleau. 

garret.  His  health  was  injured  by  it,  but  his  talent 
for  observation  must  have  profited;  sickly  and  taci- 
turn, he  noticed  everything;  and  as  he  had  not  the 
dreamy  turn  of  mind  and  his  childhood  and  youth  had 
never  known  tenderness,  he  early  accustomed  himself 
to  look  at  life  with  common-sense,  severity,  and  caustic 
bluntness.  He  was  soon  sent  to  school,  where  he 
was  finishing  his  course  in  the  fourth  class  when 
attacked  by  the  stone;  it  was  necessary  to  operate, 
and  the  operation  left  him  with  a  very  great  infirmity 
that  lasted  all  the  rest  of  his  life. 

In  school  Boileau  read,  besides  the  classic  authors, 
much  modern  poesy  and  many  novels ;  and  although  he 
himself  wrote,  after  the  custom  of  rhetoricians,  some 
rather  bad  tragedies,  his  taste  and  his  talent  for  verses 
were  already  recognised  by  his  masters.  After  gradu- 
ating in  philosophy,  he  was  put  to  study  law;  on  his 
father's  death  he  continued  to  live  with  his  brother  Je- 
rome (who  had  inherited  his  father's  office  of  clerk  of 
the  court),  made  himself  a  lawyer,  but  soon,  weary  of 
pettifogging,  tried  theology  without  more  taste  for  it, 
or  more  success.  He  obtained  a  benefice  of  only  800 
livres,  which  he  resigned  after  a  few  years  in  favour, 
it  is  said,  of  the  demoiselle  Marie  Poncher  de  Bretou- 
ville,  with  whom  he  had  been  in  love,  and  who  had 
made  herself  a  nun.  Apart  from  this  attachment, 
which  some  have  doubted,  it  does  not  appear  that 
Boileau's  youth  was  ardent,  and  he  himself  has  stated 
that  he  was   "very   little   voluptuous."     These   few 


Boileau.  253 

known  facts  on  the  twenty-four  first  years  of  his  life 
bring  us  to  the  year  1660,  the  period  when  he  entered 
the  literary  world  by  the  publication  of  his  first 
Satires. 

His  exterior  circumstances  thus  given,  the  political 
and  social  state  of  the  country  being  known,  it  is 
easy  to  conceive  what  was  the  influence  on  a  nature 
like  that  of  Boileau  of  this  early  education,  and  of  the 
domestic  habits  about  him.  Nothing  tender,  nothing 
maternal  around  the  sickly  and  desolate  child;  nothing 
inspiring  or  sympathetic  in  the  litigious  conversations 
that  went  on  around  the  armchair  of  his  father,  the 
old  clerk,  nor  in  the  habits  and  ideas  of  a  bourgeois 
family.  No  doubt  the  soul  of  a  dreamy  child  might, 
in  some  period  of  analysis  and  inward  examination, 
have  gathered  food  and  strength  from  this  obstruction 
and  repression;  but  the  soul  of  Boileau  was  not  fitted 
to  do  so.  There  was,  it  is  true,  the  resource  of 
mockery  and  burlesque.  Villon  and  Regnier  had 
already  poured  out  abundant  poetic  ridicule  on  the 
manners  and  morals  of  the  bourgeoisie,  on  that  very 
life  of  citizens  and  pettifoggers ;  but  Boileau  had  deco- 
rum in  his  mockery,  sobriety  in  his  smile,  and  they 
forbade  him  the  witty  debaucheries  of  his  predeces- 
sors. Besides,  manners  and  morals  had  lost  their 
saliency  since  the  regulating  force  of  Henri  IV  had 
rolled  over  them,  and  Louis  XIV  was  about  to  impose 
decorum. 

As  for  any   loftily   poetic   and  religious   efTect  of 


254  JBoileau. 

splendid  public  buildings  upon  a  young  life  begun 
between  Notre-Dame  and  the  Sainte-Chapelle,  it  is 
useless  to  think  of  it  as  possible  in  those  days.  The 
feeling  of  the  middle-ages  was  completely  lost;  the 
soul  of  a  Milton  could  alone  have  perceived  something 
of  it;  Boileau  saw  nothing  but  a  cathedral  of  fat 
canons  and  a  choir-boy.  Consequently,  what  was  it 
that  came  suddenly,  and  for  a  first  essay,  of  the  glow, 
the  fancy  of  his  twenty-four  years,  of  that  poet's 
existence  long  so  miserable,  so  repressed  ?  Not  the 
pious  and  sublime  sadness  of  the  Penseroso  wandering 
by  night,  in  tears,  beneath  the  Gothic  cloisters  and 
the  solitary  arcades;  nor  the  vigorous  onslaught  of  a 
Regnier  on  nocturnal  orgies  in  the  dark  alleys  and  the 
spiral  stairways  of  the  Cite;  not  the  soft  and  unctuous 
poesy  of  the  family  hearth  like  that  of  La  Fontaine  at 
Ducis;  no,  it  was  "Damon,  the  great  author,"  bid- 
ding farewell  to  the  town,  after  Juvenal;  it  was  satire 
on  the  intricacy  of  the  streets  of  Paris;  it  was  sharp 
and  wholesome  sarcasm  on  the  wretched  rhymers 
who  swarmed  in  those  days,  having  usurped  a  repu- 
tation in  the  town  and  at  Court.  Like  his  caustic 
elder  brother,  Gilles  Boileau,  he  made  war  upon  the 
Cotins  and  their  like.  He  had,  for  his  sole  instiga- 
tion, "the  hatred  of  silly  books." 

I  have  just  said  that  the  feeling  of  the  middle-ages 
was  lost;  it  did  not  survive  in  France  till  the  sixteenth 
century;  the  Greek  and  Roman  invasion  of  the  Renais- 
sance  smothered   it.     Nevertheless,  while  this  great 


IJSoileau.  255 

and  long  neglect  of  the  middle-ages  was  working  to 
an  end  (which  did  not  happen  till  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century),  while  the  really  modern  era  for  so- 
ciety and  for  art  in  particular  was  still  awaited,  France, 
scarcely  recovered  from  the  agitations  of  the  League  and 
the  Fronde,  was  slowly  creating  for  herself  a  literature, 
a  poesy,  tardy  no  doubt,  and  somewhat  artificial,  but  a 
mixture  skilfully  blended,  original  in  its  imitation,  and 
beautiful  still  in  the  decline  of  a  society  the  ruins  of 
which  it  draped.  Drama  apart,  we  may  consider 
Malherbe  and  Boileau  as  the  authors,  official  and 
authorised,  of  the  poetic  movement  produced  during 
the  last  two  centuries  at  the  summit  and  on  the  sur- 
face of  French  society.  They  are  both  distinguished 
by  a  powerful  infusion  of  critical  wit,  and  by  a  pitiless 
opposition  to  their  immediate  predecessors.  Malherbe 
is  inexorable  for  Ronsard,  Des  Fortes,  and  their  disci- 
ples, as  Boileau  was  for  Colletet,  Menage,  Chapelain, 
Benserade,  and  Scudery. 

This  rigour,  especially  that  of  Boileau,  may  often 
call  itself  by  the  name  of  justice :  nevertheless,  even 
when  they  are  right,  Malherbe  and  Boileau  are  so  in 
the  rather  vulgar  manner  of  common-sense;  that  is  to 
say,  without  the  force  of  passion,  without  principles, 
with  incomplete  and  insufficient  views.  They  are 
empirical;  they  attack  real  vices,  but  exterior  ones, 
the  symptoms  of  a  poesy  that  is  rotten  at  the  core;  to 
regenerate  it  they  do  not  go  to  the  heart  of  the  evil. 
Because  Ronsard,   Scudery,   and   Chapelain  seem  to 


256  Boileau. 

them  detestable,  they  conclude  that  there  was  no  true 
taste,  no  real  poesy  among  those  ancients;  they  ig- 
nore and  suppress  out  and  out  the  great  renovators  of 
the  art  of  poesy  in  the  middle-ages ;  they  judge  blindly 
by  a  few  passages  in  Petrarch,  a  few  concetti  of  Tasso, 
to  which  the  wits  of  the  time  of  Henri  III  and  Louis 
XIII  were  attached.  And  when,  with  their  notions 
of  reform,  they  decided  to  return  to  the  antiquity  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  always  faithful  to  that  incomplete 
logic  of  common-sense,  which  never  dares  to  drive 
things  to  a  conclusion,  they  preferred  the  Romans  to 
the  Greeks;  the  age  of  Augustus  presented  to  them  at 
once  the  type  of  the  absolutely  beautiful. 

However,  these  uncertainties  and  inconsistencies 
were  inevitable  in  an  episodical  epoch,  under  a  reign 
that  was,  in  a  way,  accidental,  and  which  never 
plunged  deeply  into  either  the  past  or  the  future.  The 
arts,  instead  of  living  and  cohabiting  in  the  bosom  of 
the  same  sphere,  and  being  gathered  back  perpetually 
to  the  common  centre  of  their  rays,  were  isolated, 
each,  on  its  own  line  and  at  its  own  extremity,  acting 
solely  on  the  surface.  Perrault,  Mansart,  LuUi,  Le 
Brun,  Boileau,  Vauban,  though  they  had  among 
them,  in  manner  and  method,  general  points  of  re- 
semblance, had  no  understanding  with  one  another, 
and  did  not  sympathise,  imprisoned  as  they  were  in 
the  technique  of  their  own  work.  In  periods  truly 
palingenesic  it  is  quite  the  contrary;  Phidias,  whom 
Homer  inspired,  supplements  Sophocles  by  his  chisel; 


Boileau.  257 

Orcagna  commentates  Petrarch  or  Dante  with  his 
brush;  Chateaubriand  understands  Bonaparte.  But 
let  us  return  to  Boileau.  It  would  be  too  harsh  to 
apply  to  him  alone  the  observations  that  should  fall 
upon  his  century,  but  in  which  he  has,  necessarily,  a 
large  share  in  his  quality  of  critical  poet  and  literary 
legislator. 

That  is,  in  truth,  the  role  and  the  position  that 
Boileau  assumes  in  his  first  essays.  From  1 664,  that  is 
to  say  from  his  twenty-eighth  year,  we  find  him  inti- 
mately allied  with  all  that  the  literature  of  that  day 
could  show  of  best  and  most  illustrious;  with  La  Fon- 
taine and  Moliere,  already  celebrated,  with  Racine, 
whose  guide  and  counsellor  he  became.  The  dinners 
in  the  rue  du  Vieux-Colombier  took  place  weekly,  and 
Boileau  bore  the  palm  for  criticism.  He  frequented 
the  best  company,  that  of  M.  da  La  Rochefoucauld, 
of  Mesdames  de  La  Fayette  and  de  Sevigne;  knew 
the  Lamoignons,  the  Vivonnes,  the  Pomponnes,  and 
among  them  all  his  decisions  in  matters  of  taste  were 
law.  Presented  at  Court  in  1669,  he  was  appointed 
historiographer  in  1677;  at  the  latter  period,  through 
the  publication  of  nearly  all  his  satires  and  his  epistles, 
of  r  Art  poetique  and  the  first  four  cantos  of  the  Luirin, 
he  had  attained  the  climax  of  his  reputation. 

Boileau  was  forty-one  years  old  when  he  was  made 
historiographer;  and  it  may  be  said  that  his  literary 
career  ended  at  that  age.  During  the  fifteen  years 
that  followed,  down  to   1693,  he  published  nothing 

VOL.  II. 17. 


258  Boileau. 

but  the  last  two  cantos  of  the  Lutrin  ;  and  from  that 
time  to  the  end  of  his  life  (171 1),  that  is,  for  eighteen 
years,  he  did  no  more  than  the  satire  Sur  les  Femmes, 
the  epistles  a  ses  Vers,  aAntoine,  and  Sur  V Amour  de 
Dieu,  together  with  the  satires  Sur  V Homme  and  Sur 
I' Equivoque.  We  must  look  into  his  private  life  for 
the  explanation  of  these  irregularities;  from  it  we  may 
gather  certain  considerations  on  the  nature  and  quality 
of  his  talent. 

During  the  period  of  his  growing  fame,  Boileau 
continued  to  lodge  in  the  house  of  his  brother,  the 
clerk,  Jerome  Boileau.  This  home  must  have  been 
little  agreeable  for  a  poet,  the  wife  of  Jerome  being,  it 
was  said,  crabbed  and  a  scold.  In  1679,  on  Jerome's 
death,  he  went  to  live  for  a  few  years  with  his  nephew, 
Dongois,  also  a  clerk;  but  after  making  (in  a  carriage) 
the  campaigns  in  Flanders  and  Alsace,  he  was  enabled 
by  the  king's  liberality  to  buy  a  little  house  at  Auteuil, 
where  we  find  him  installed  in  1687.'  His  health, 
always  very  delicate,  became  worse,  and  he  suffered 
from  an  extinction  of  voice  and  deafness,  which  un- 
fitted him  for  society  and  a  Court  life. 

It  is  by  following  Boileau  into  his  solitude  at  Auteuil 
that  we  learn  to  know  him  best ;  it  is  by  observing  what 
he  did  and  did  not  do  then,  during  more  than  twenty 
years,  delivered  over  to  himself,  feeble  in  body  but 

'  It  was  then  that  he  took  the  name  of  his  little  property,  Des  Preaux, 
to  distinguish  him  from  his  brothers.  He  is  called,  in  all  the  memoirs 
of  the  time,  M.  Despreaux. 


JBotleau.  259 

sound  in  mind,  and  in  the  centre  of  a  smiling  land- 
scape, that  we  can  judge  with  truth  and  certainty 
of  his  earlier  productions  and  assign  the  limits  of  his 
faculties.  Well!  must  we  say  it,  strange,  unheard-of 
thing?  —  during  this  long  sojourn  in  the  country,  a 
prey  to  infirmities  of  the  body  which,  leaving  the  soul 
clear,  disposed  him  to  sadness  and  revery,  not  one 
word  of  conversation,  not  one  line  of  correspondence, 
not  one  verse  betrays  in  Boileau  a  tender  emotion,  a 
true  and  simple  feeling  for  the  Nature  around  him. 
No,  it  is  not  indispensable,  in  order  to  rouse  us  to  a 
deep  and  vivid  sense  of  Nature's  things,  to  go  afar, 
beyond  the  seas,  through  countries  beloved  of  the 
sun,  the  lands  of  the  lemon  and  the  orange,  floating 
all  night  in  a  gondola  in  Venice  or  at  Baia,  at  the  feet  of 
an  Elvire  or  a  Guiccioli — no,  much  less  suffices.  Look 
at  Horace,  how  he  contents  himself,  for  his  reveries, 
with  a  little  field,  a  tiny  spring  of  living  water,  a  bit 
of  forest  above,  et  paulum  sylvce  super  his  foret: 
Look  at  La  Fontaine,  how  he  loves  to  sit  down  and 
forget  himself  for  long  hours  beneath  an  oak;  how 
marvellously  he  understands  the  woods,  the  waters, 
the  fields,  the  warrens,  and  the  rabbits  nibbling  thyme 
in  the  dew,  the  farms  with  the  smoke  rising  from  their 
chimneys,  the  dove-cotes,  and  the  poultry-yards.  And 
that  good  Ducis,  who,  himself,  lived  at  Auteuil,  how 
he  loves  and  how  he  paints  the  little  smiling  hollows 
and  the  hillsides!  "  I  walked  a  league  this  morning," 
he  wrote  to  a  friend,    "over  plains   of  heather  and 


26o  Boileau. 

sometimes  among  bushes  covered  with  blossoms  and 
singing."  Nothing  of'all  that  in  Boileau.  What  then 
does  he  do  at  Auteuil  ?  He  takes  care  of  his  healthy 
he  gives  hospitality  to  his  friends,  he  plays  at  skittles, 
he  talks,  after  his  wine,  of  Court  news,  the  Academy, 
the  Abbe  Cotin,  Charpentier,  or  Perrault,  just  as  Nicole 
talked  theology  under  the  charming  leafage  of  Port- 
Royal;  he  writes  to  Racine,  asking  him  to  kindly  re- 
call him  to  the  memory  of  the  king  and  Mme.  de 
Maintenon;  he  tells  him  he  is  composing  an  ode  in 
which  he  "risks  things  that  are  very  novel,  even  to 
speaking  of  the  white  plume  the  king  wears  on  his 
hat."  The  best  thing  he  does  is  assuredly  a  clever 
epistle  to  Antoine;  and  even  in  that  the  good  gardener 
is  transformed  into  "the  governor  of  the  garden  ";  he 
does  not  plant,  he  "directs"  the  yew  and  the  honey- 
suckle, he  "  exercises  "  on  the  wall-fruit  the  "art  of  la 
Quintinie" — there  was  Versailles  even  at  Auteuil! 

But  Boileau  grew  old,  his  infirmities  Increased,  his 
friends  died;  La  Fontaine  and  Racine  were  taken  from 
him.  Let  us  say  to  his  praise,  at  this  moment  when 
we  are  judging  his  talent  with  some  severity,  that  he 
was  more  sensitive  to  friendship  than  to  any  other  affec- 
tion. In  a  letter,  dated  1695,  and  addressed  to  M.  de 
Mancroix  on  the  subject  of  La  Fontaine's  death,  we 
find  this  passage,  almost  the  only  touching  words  to 
be  found  in  Boileau's  whole  correspondence: 

"  It  seems  to  me,  monsieur,  that  this  is  a  very  long  letter.  But 
the  truth  is,  the  leisure  that  I  now  have  at  Auteuil  lets  me,  as  it  were, 


3Boileau.  261 

transport  myself  to  Reims,  where  I  imagine  that  I  am  talking  with 
you  in  your  garden,  and  see  you  again,  as  formerly,  with  all  the  dear 
friends  whom  we  have  lost  and  who  have  disappeared  velut  somnium 
surgentis" 

To  the  infirmities  of  age  were  added  a  lawsuit  un- 
pleasant to  carry  on,  and  a  sense  of  the  public  mis- 
fortunes. After  the  death  of  Racine,  Boileau  never 
set  foot  in  Versailles;  he  judged  sadly  of  men  and 
things;  and  even  in  the  matter  of  taste,  decadence 
seemed  to  him  so  rapid  that  he  went  as  far  as  to  regret 
the  days  of  Bonnecorse  and  Pradon.  What  one  has 
difficulty  in  understanding  is  the  fact  that  in  his  last 
days  he  sold  his  house  at  Auteuil,  and  went  to  die 
(171 1)  in  the  cloister  of  Notre-Dame,  in  the  quarters 
of  his  confessor,  the  canon  Lenoir.  His  principal  mo- 
tive, no  doubt,  was  piety,  as  stated  in  the  "Necrology 
of  Port-Royal";  but  economy  also  had  something  to 
do  with  it,  for  he  was  fond  of  money.  The  old  age  of 
the  poet-historiographer  was  not  less  sad  and  morose 
than  that  of  the  monarch. 

Boileau  was  not  a  poet,  if  we  restrict  that  title  to 
beings  strongly  endowed  with  imagination  and  soul; 
though  his  Liitrin  reveals  a  talent  capable  of  inven- 
tion and,  above  all,  of  picturesque  beauties  of  detail. 
Boileau,  as  I  see  him,  was  a  man  of  shrewd  and  sen- 
sible mind,  polished  and  sarcastic;  not  fruitful;  agree- 
ably abrupt;  a  religious  observer  of  good  taste;  a  good 
writer  of  verse;  learnedly  correct,  wittily  gay,  the 
oracle  of  the  Court,  and  of  Letters  in  those  days; 
just  such  as  was  needed  to  please  on  all  sides — Patru 


262  Bolleau. 

and  Bussy,  d'Aguesseau  and  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  M. 
Arnauld  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon, —  to  impose  on 
young  courtiers,  and  make  himself  acceptable  to  old 
ones,  and  be  esteemed  by  all  as  an  honest  man  of 
merit.  He  is  the  "poet-author,"  knowing  how  to 
converse  and  to  live,  but  truthful,  irascible  at  the  very 
idea  of  falsity;  taking  fire  on  behalf  of  the  right,  and 
attaining  sometimes,  through  a  sentiment  of  literary 
equity,  to  a  species  of  moral  sympathy  and  luminous 
resplendency,  as  in  his  Epistle  to  Racine.  The  latter 
represented  well  the  tender  and  passionate  side  of 
Louis  XIV  and  his  Court;  Boileau  represents  not  less 
perfectly  the  sustained  gravity,  the  upright  good  sense 
rising  to  nobleness,  and  the  decent  order  of  Court  and 
monarch.  Boileau's  literature  and  poetic  art  are  mar- 
vellously in  accord  with  religion,  philosophy,  political 
economy,  strategy,  and  all  the  arts  of  the  day;  it  is  the 
same  mixture  of  sound  sense  and  insufficiency,  of 
views  provisionally  right,  but  seldom  decidedly  so.' 

The  point  of  view  as  to  all  that  concerns  Boileau 
has  changed  very  much  during  the  twenty-five  years 
just  passed.  When,  under  the  Restoration,  at  that 
brilliant  moment  of  valorous  attempts  and  hopes, 
younger  generations  came  upon  the  scene,  striving 
to  inspire  new  life  into  style  and  form,  and  to  extend 
the  circle  of  literary  ideas  and  comparisons,  they  met 

'The  foregoing  was  written  in  April,  1829.  It  did  not  wholly 
satisfy  the  writer,  and  in  September,  1852,  twenty-three  years  later, 
he  returned  to  the  subject  in  what  here  follows. — Tr. 


3BoUeau.  263 

with  resistance  from  their  predecessors.  Estimable, 
but  hide-bound  writers,  with  other  writers  less  es- 
timable, who  would  certainly  have  been  in  Boileau's 
day  those  he  would  have  begun  by  castigating,  put 
forward  the  name  of  that  legislator  of  Parnassus,  and 
without  considering  the  differences  of  epochs  and 
centuries,  quoted  his  verses  on  all  occasions  as  though 
they  were  the  articles  of  a  code.  1  did  then  what  it 
was  natural  to  do;  I  took  the  Works  of  Boileau  by 
themselves;  though  not  numerous,  they  are  of  un- 
equal strength;  some  show  the  youth,  others  the  old 
age  of  the  writer.  While  doing  justice  to  his  fine  and 
wholesome  parts,  I  did  not  do  it  amply,  nor  did  1  as- 
sociate myself  heartily  with  the  spirit  of  the  man. 
Boileau  as  a  personage  and  an  authority  is  far  more  to 
be  considered  than  his  work;  and  it  needs  a  certain 
effort  to  grasp  him  as  a  whole.  In  a  word,  I  did  not 
then  do  a  full  historical  work  upon  him;  I  remained 
with  one  foot  in  polemics. 

To-day,  with  the  circle  of  experiences  accomplished, 
and  discussions  exhausted,  I  return  to  him  with  pleas- 
ure. If  it  is  permissible  to  speak  of  myself,  I  would 
say  that  Boileau  is  one  of  the  men  who  have  most 
occupied  my  mind  since  I  have  written  criticism,  and 
the  one  with  whom  I  have  most  lived  in  idea.  I 
have  often  thought  of  what  he  was,  recalling  what 
seemed  lacking  to  me  at  an  earlier  time;  and  to-day  I 
can  speak  of  him,  I  venture  to  say,  with  a  very  keen 
and  very  present  feeling. 


264  3BoiIeau. 

Born  November  i,  1636,  in  Paris,  in  the  rue  de  Je- 
rusalem, opposite  to  the  house  that  was  the  cradle  of 
Voltaire,  Nicolas  Boileau  was  the  fourteenth  child  of 
his  father,  clerk  of  the  Grand  Chamber  of  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Paris.  Losing  his  mother  at  an  early  age,  he 
knew  nothing  of  the  tender  care  that  usually  brightens 
childhood.  His  first  studies  were  hindered  by  an 
operation  for  the  stone.  His  father  destined  him  for 
the  Church,  and  he  was  tonsured.  He  did  his  theology 
at  the  Sorbonne,  disliked  it,  and  after  going  through  a 
course  of  law,  was  called  to  the  bar.  In  his  twenty- 
first  year  he  lost  his  father,  who  left  him  some  for- 
tune, enough  to  make  him  independent  of  clients  and 
publishers,  and,  his  genius  goading  him,  he  gave  him- 
self wholly  to  Letters,  to  poesy,  and,  among  other 
styles  of  poesy,  to  satire.  In  that  family  of  clerks 
and  lawyers  a  satirical  genius  circulated.  Two  broth- 
ers of  Boileau,  Gilles  and  Jacques,  were  both  stamped 
with  that  same  characteristic  in  different  forms,  which 
it  is  piquant  to  notice  here,  because  they  serve  better 
to  define  the  illustrious  younger  brother. 

Gilles  Boileau,  lawyer  and  rhymester,  who  belonged 
to  the  Academy  twenty-five  years  before  his  brother 
Nicolas,  was  one  of  those  ^owr^^o/5  and  malicious  wits 
aiming  for  high  society  as  a  follower  of  Boisrobert,  a 
hornet  race  engendered  by  the  Fronde,  who  sported 
gaily  during  the  ministry  of  Mazarin.  Scarron,  against 
whom  he  had  made  a  rather  witty  epigram,  defined 
him  in  a  letter  to  Fouquet  thus:  "Boileau,  well  known 


Boileau.  265 

to-day  for  his  backbiting,  for  iiis  treachery  to  M. 
Menage,  and  for  the  civil  war  he  caused  in  the  Acad- 
emy, is  a  young  man  who  began  early  to  damage 
himself,  and  has  since  contrived  to  damage  others." 
Gilles  Boileau,  when  travelling,  carried  the  "Satires" 
of  Regnier  in  his  carpetbag;  usually  he  took  up  his 
station  before  the  third  pillar  in  the  great  hall  of  the 
Palais  [law  courts],  setting  the  tone  to  the  young  wits 
among  the  lawyers.  He  was  called  "Boileau,  the 
grammarian,"  and  "Boileau,  the  critic."  This  is 
enough  to  show  that  he  lacked  only  more  solidity 
and  more  taste  to  have  played  the  part  of  his  brother 
Nicolas;  humour  and  satirical  intention  were  not 
wanting  in  him. 

Jacques  Boileau,  otherwise  called  the  Abbe  Boileau, 
doctor  of  the  Sorbonne,  long  dean  of  the  church  at 
Sens,  subsequently  canon  of  the  Sainte-Chapelle,  was 
also  of  the  same  nature,  but  with  traits  that  were 
franker  and  more  spontaneous.  He  had  the  gift  of 
repartee  and  witty  sayings.  It  was  he  who,  hearing 
a  Jesuit  say  that  Pascal,  then  in  retirement  at  Port- 
Royal-des-Champs,  was  making  shoes,  like  those 
Messieurs,  for  penance,  promptly  said:  "  1  don't  know, 
Reverend  Father,  whether  he  is  making  shoes,  but 
you  must  admit  that  he  has  delivered  you  a  famous 
botte"  [thrust].  When  he  was  performing  the  service 
in  the  Sainte-Chapelle  he  sang  with  both  sides  of  the 
choir,  and  always  out  of  time  and  tune.  He  was 
fond  of  strange  subjects  and  titles  for  his  books,  such 


266  Boileau. 

as:  "History  of  the  Flagellants,"  and  "Short  Coat  of 
Ecclesiastics";  his  Latin,  for  he  usually  wrote  in  that 
language,  was  harsh,  fantastic,  and  anomalous.  With 
his  puns  and  his  gaiety  he  makes  me  think  of  his 
brother  Nicolas  when  the  latter  was  facetious  and  in 
good  humour.  He  resembled  him  in  face,  but  with 
some  exaggeration  and  caricature.  Except  for  powers 
of  reasoning,  he  was  equal  to  him  in  mind.  One  day 
the  great  Conde,  passing  through  the  town  of  Sens, 
which  was  in  his  government  of  Bourgogne,  was 
complimented  by  the  Guilds  and  Companies  of  the 
town.  Caustic  as  usual,  he  made  game  of  those  who 
were  paying  him  compliments. 

"His  greatest  pleasure,"  says  a  contemporary,  "  was  to  do  some 
malicious  thing  to  the  complimenters  on  such  occasions.  The  Abbe 
Boileau,  who  was  dean  of  the  cathedral  church  at  Sens,  was  obliged 
to  make  a  speech  at  the  head  of  his  Chapter.  M.  le  Prince,  wishing  to 
disconcert  the  orator,  whom  he  did  not  know,  affected  to  advance  his 
head  and  his  big  nose  close  to  the  dean,  as  if  to  hear  him  better,  but 
really  to  make  him  blunder  in  his  speech,  if  he  could.  But  the  abbe, 
who  perceived  his  malice,  pretended  to  be  abashed  and  overcome,  and 
began  his  speech  thus,  with  affected  terror:  '  Monseigneur,  your 
Highness  must  not  be  surprised  to  see  me  confused  and  trembling  in 
appearing  before  you  at  the  head  of  a  company  of  ecclesiastics,  for  if  I 
was  at  the  head  of  an  army  of  thirty  thousand  men  1  should  tremble 
much  more.'  M.  le  Prince,  charmed  with  that  beginning,  embraced 
the  orator,  would  not  let  him  finish,  asked  his  name,  and  when  told 
that  he  was  the  brother  of  M.  Despreaux,  he  redoubled  his  caresses 
and  kept  him  to  dinner." 

The  Abbe  Boileau  seems  to  me  to  possess  the 
brusquerie,  the  dart  and  thrust  of  his  brother,  without 
his  refinement  and  his  serious  and  judicial  application 


3BoiIeau.  267 

of  his  wit.  The  originality  of  Nicolas  Boileau,  being 
of  this  mocking  and  satirical  family,  was  that  he 
joined  to  hereditary  malice  a  portion  of  sound  common- 
sense,  so  that  those  who  had  dealings  with  him,  like 
Mathieu  Marais,  could  say:  "There  is  pleasure  in 
listening  to  that  man;   he  is  reason  incarnate." 

In  considering  this  line  of  brothers,  alike,  yet  un- 
equal, it  seems  to  me  that  Nature,  that  great  generator 
of  talents,  made  a  first  sketch  of  Nicolas  when  she 
created  Gilles;  there  she  stopped,  repentant;  then  she 
took  up  her  crayon  again  and  drew  a  bold  stroke  in 
making  Jacques;  but  that  time  the  stroke  was  too 
hard.  The  third  time  that  she  set  to  work  the  result 
was  good :  Gilles  is  the  sketch,  Jacques  is  the  carica- 
ture, Nicolas  is  the  portrait. 

In  his  first  Satires,  composed  and  put  in  circulation 
in  1660,  in  those  that  followed  almost  immediately, 
and  in  the  Satire  dedicated  to  Moliere  in  1664,  Boileau 
shows  himself  a  skilful  versifier,  more  exact  and  scru- 
pulous than  others  of  his  day,  much  preoccupied  in 
presenting  elegantly  certain  special  details  relating  to 
bourgeois  citizens  and  poetasters;  never  approaching 
mankind  or  life  on  the  side  of  feelings,  like  Racine  and 
La  Fontaine,  nor  on  the  side  of  moral  and  philosophi- 
cal humorous  observation,  like  La  Fontaine  again,  and 
Moliere;  he  does  it  from  a  point  of  view  less  extended, 
less  fertile,  but  agreeable,  nevertheless,  and  pungent. 
He  was  the  author  by  profession,  the  poet  of  the  Cite 
and  the  Place  Dauphine,  who  placed  himseh  in  judg- 


268  Boileau. 

ment  over  the  illustrious  writers  spread  out  for  sale  at 
Barbin's,  in  tiie  gallery  of  the  Palais. 

In  his  "  Satires  "  and  in  his  "  Epistles,"  Boileau  con- 
stantly lets  us  see  the  labour  and  the  deliberations  of 
his  mind.  In  his  youth  it  was  always  so  ;  there 
was  something  captious,  capricious,  vexed  in  young 
Boileau's  muse;  it  never  had  the  emotional  ring  of 
youth;  it  was  grey-haired  from  the  start;  this  became 
him  as  he  matured,  and  in  his  second  period  he  seems 
younger  than  at  first,  for  all  is  then  in  keeping.  This 
moment  of  maturity  in  Boileau  is  also  the  period 
when  he  affords  the  most  pleasure.  If  he  has  any 
charm,  properly  so  called,  it  is  at  this  time  only,  the 
period  of  the  first  four  cantos  of  the  Lutrin  and  of  the 
Epistle  to  Racine. 

Boileau's  muse,  looked  at  rightly,  had  nothing  of 
youth  but  courage  and  audacity.  He  needed  both 
to  attempt  his  enterprise,  which  was  nothing  less 
than  to  say  to  the  literary  men  most  in  vogue,  to 
the  academicians  who  possessed  the  most  influence: 
"You  are  bad  authors,  or,  at  any  rate,  very  mixed 
authors.  You  write  haphazard;  out  of  ten  verses, 
twenty  verses,  a  hundred  verses,  you  sometimes  have 
only  one  or  two  that  are  good ;  and  those  are  drowned 
in  the  bad  taste,  the  loose  style,  the  insipidity  of  the 
rest."  Boileau's  work  was,  not  to  return  to  Mal- 
herbe,  already  far  behind,  but  to  make  French  poesy 
submit  to  a  reform  of  the  same  kind  that  Pascal  had 
introduced  into  French  prose.     It  is  from  Pascal,  above 


JBoileau.  269 

all  and  before  all,  that  Boileau,  it  seems  to  me,  de- 
rives; one  might  say  that  he  is  the  child  in  literature 
of  the  Provinciales.  The  poetical  and  critical  purpose 
of  Boileau  is  very  well  defined  in  the  following  words: 

"  To  guide  and  elevate  French  poesy  which  (excepting  two  or  three 
names),  was  going  at  random,  and  was  decadent;  to  lead  it  up  to  the 
level  where  the  Provinciales  had  carried  prose;  but  to  maintain,  never- 
theless, the  exact  limits  and  distinctions  of  the  two  classes.  Pascal 
scoffed  at  our  poesy  and  its  conventional  tinsel :  '  golden  age,' — '  mar- 
vels of  our  time,' — '  fateful  laurels,' — '  beauteous  star.' — And  they  call 
that  jargon,  he  says,  poetic  beauty!  " 

The  question  for  Boileau  was  to  render  poesy  re- 
spectable to  the  Pascals,  and  to  allow  nothing  that 
sound  judgment  could  reprove. 

We  must  represent  to  ourselves  the  exact  state  of 
French  poesy  when  Boileau  appeared,  and  take  it 
first  among  the  best  and  greatest  names:  Moliere, 
with  his  genius,  rhyming  at  full  speed;  La  Fontaine, 
with  his  carelessness,  leaving  the  reins  loose  (es- 
pecially in  his  first  manner) ;  the  great  Corneille,  letting 
his  verses  go  as  they  would  and  never  retouching 
them.  Thus  Boileau  was  the  first  to  apply  to  the 
poetic  style  Pascal's  method  for  the  prose  style:  "  If  I 
write  four  words,  I  efface  three."  He  goes  back  to 
Malherbe's  law  and  gives  it  fresh  vigour;  he  extends 
it  and  adapts  it  to  his  epoch;  he  teaches  it  to  his 
young  friend  Racine,  who  without  it  might  some- 
times have  gone  amiss;  he  recalls  it  to  La  Fontaine, 
already  mature,   and  inculcates  it  on  him;  he  even 


270  JBoileau. 

brings  Moliere  to  think  of  it  twice  in  his  most  per- 
fected plays  in  verse.  Boileau  understood,  and  made 
his  friends  understand,  that  "a  few  admirable  verses 
do  not  justify  the  neglect  of  others  that  surround 
them."  Such  is  the  true  definition  of  his  literary 
work. 

But  this  one  thought  and  purpose  was  fitted  to  kill 
that  crowd  of  fashionable  beaux-esprits  and  rhyme- 
sters, who  owed  a  few  happy  lines  to  chance  and  to 
the  multitude  of  their  pen-strokes,  and  who  were  living 
on  that  credit  and  on  tolerance.  Also  it  struck  no  less 
directly  the  ceremonious  and  pompous  oracles  who 
had  gained  an  imposing  credit  at  Court  by  the  help  of 
an  erudition  without  nicety  of  judgment  and  without 
taste.  Chapelain  was  the  leader  of  that  old  party  still 
reigning.  One  of  Boileau's  first  cares  was  to  dislodge 
him  in  the  estimation  of  Colbert,  under  whom  Chape- 
lain was  a  sort  of  head  clerk  of  Letters,  and  to  make 
him  ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  all  as  a  writer. 

God  knows  what  scandal  was  caused  by  this  auda- 
city of  the  young  man!  The  Montausiers,  the  Huets, 
the  Pellissons,  the  Scuderys  shuddered;  but  Colbert 
comprehended,  and  that  sufficed;  it  was  enough  that 
the  minister  understood  the  daring  judge,  that  he 
laughed  as  he  read  and  heard  him,  and  that  in  the 
midst  of  his  grave  and  heavy  labours  the  mere  sight 
of  Boileau  made  him  merry.  Boileau  was  one  of  the 
rare  and  legitimate  amusements  of  Colbert.  Boileau 
has  so  long  been   presented  to  us  in  our  youth  as 


Botleau.  271 

frowning  and  severe  that  we  find  it  difficult  to  im- 
agine him  as  he  was  in  reahty — the  liveliest  of  serious 
minds,  and  the  most  agreeable  of  censors. 

To  put  myself  still  more  in  his  presence  I  went 
yesterday  to  see,  in  the  Museum  of  Sculpture,  the  fine 
bust  made  of  him  by  Girardon.  He  is  there  treated 
in  a  free,  broad  manner;  the  ample  and  indispensa- 
ble wig  is  nobly  placed  on  his  forehead,  and  does  not 
overweight  it;  his  attitude  is  firm  and  even  proud, 
the  carriage  of  the  head  confident;  a  satirical  half- 
smile  flickers  on  his  lips;  the  line  of  the  nose,  a  little 
turned  up,  and  that  of  the  mouth  indicate  a  jesting, 
laughing,  satirical  habit;  the  lips,  however,  are  kind 
and  frank,  half-open  and  speaking,  as  if  they  could 
not  withhold  the  jest.  The  bared  neck  gives  to  view 
a  double  chin,  which  is,  nevertheless,  more  allied  to 
thinness  than  to  embonpoint;  the  neck,  a  little  hol- 
low, is  in  keeping  with  the  weariness  of  voice  which 
had  troubled  him  from  childhood.  But  seeing  him  as 
a  whole,  how  thoroughly  we  feel  that  the  living  man 
must  have  been  the  contrary  of  sad  or  sombre,  and 
not  in  the  least  wearisome! 

Before  taking  to  this  rather  solemn  wig  himself, 
young  Boileau  had  pulled  off  more  than  one  from 
other  heads.  I  shall  not  repeat  what  is  well  known 
to  all,  but  here  is  a  little  story  which  has  never,  as  I 
believe,  reached  print.  One  day  Racine,  who  was 
readily  mischievous  when  the  fancy  took  him,  thought 
it  would  be  an  excellent  trick  to  take  Boileau  to  pay  a 


272  Boileau. 

visit  to  Ciiapelain,  wlio  lived  in  tlie  rue  des  Cinq- 
Diamants  in  the  Lombard  quarter.  Racine  had  reason 
to  be  grateful  to  Chapelain,  having  received  encour- 
agement from  him  on  his  earliest  odes.  Using,  there- 
fore, the  access  he  had  to  that  learned  personage,  he 
presented  Boileau  to  him  as  M.  le  hailli  de  Chevreuse, 
who,  being  in  Paris,  wished  to  become  acquainted 
with  so  important  a  personage.  Chapelain  suspected 
nothing;  but,  in  the  course  of  the  visit,  the  hailli, 
who  was  presented  to  him  as  an  amateur  of  litera- 
ture, having  turned  the  conversation  upon  the  drama, 
Chapelain,  learned  man  that  he  was,  declared  his 
preference  for  Italian  comedies,  and  extolled  them  to 
the  prejudice  of  Moliere.  Boileau  could  not  contain 
himself;  in  vain  did  Racine  make  signs  to  him;  the 
pretended  bailli  took  fire  and  was  on  the  point  of 
betraying  himself.  His  introducer  hastened  to  cut 
short  the  interview.  On  leaving,  they  encountered 
the  Abbe  Cotin  on  the  staircase,  but  luckily  he  did 
not  recognise  the  bailli.  Such  were  Boileau's  early 
pranks.  The  point  is:  if  such  be  played  at  all,  to 
place  them  judiciously. 

Boileau's  "  Satires  "  are  not,  in  these  days,  the  most 
pleasing  of  his  works.  The  subjects  are  rather  petty, 
but,  when  the  author  takes  them  on  the  moral  side, 
they  turn  to  commonplace;  such  as  the  Satire  ad- 
dressed to  the  Abbe  Le  Vayer  on  human  follies,  and 
that  to  Dangeau  on  nobility.  In  the  Satire  and  in 
his  "Epistles,"  the  moment  that  works  of  the  intellect 


3BoiIeau.  273 

are  not  the  special  topic,  Boileau  is  very  inferior  to 
Horace  and  to  Pope;  and  incomparably  so  to  Moliere 
and  La  Fontaine;  he  becomes  a  mere  ordinary  moral- 
ist, an  honest  man  of  good  sense,  who  is  superior 
only  in  details  and  in  the  portraits  that  he  introduces. 
His  best  Satire  is  the  IXth.  "It  is  perhaps  the  mas- 
terpiece of  its  class,"  says  Fontanes.  This  master- 
piece of  satire  is  addressed  to  his  Esprit,  a  favourite 
topic,  alv^ays  the  same,  rhymes,  method  of  w^riting, 
portrait  of  his  own  imagination;  he  paints  himself 
more  fully,  with  more  development  than  ever,  with  a 
fire  that  lights  up  his  figure  marvellously,  and  makes 
him  for  all  future  time  the  living  type  of  the  critic. 

Boileau's  sensibility  went,  very  early,  into  his  reason 
and  remained  one  with  it.  His  passion  (for  in  this 
direction  he  had  passion)  was  wholly  critical  and 
exhaled  itself  in  his  judgments.  "  The  true  in  works 
of  the  mind  " — that  idea  was  at  all  times  his  mistress, 
his  Berenice.  When  his  upright  sense  was  shocked 
he  could  not  contain  himself.  Speaking  in  that  Satire 
of  Truth  he  says: 

"  'T  was  she  who  in  pointing  the  road  I  should  follow 
Taught  me  hatred  of  books  that  are  silly  and  hollow." 

The  "hatred  of  silly  books,"  and  also  the  love  and 
worship  of  good  and  beautiful  works,  was  the  lesson 
he  learned.  When  Boileau  praises  with  full  and 
heartfelt  meaning,  how  moved  he  is,  and  how  he 
moves  us!  how  passionate  and  affectionate  his  lines: 


VOL.  II. li. 


274  ifiSoileau, 

"  In  vain  'gainst  '  The  Cid  '  may  the  ministry  league, 
All  Paris  for  Chimene  has  the  eyes  of  Rodrigue; 
In  vain  may  the  learned  Academy  censure  it, 
The  public,  rebellious,  resolves  to  admire  it." 


How  generous  the  tone!  how  the  eyebrows  frown! 
The  grey  eyes  glitter  with  a  tear;  his  verse  is  that 
of  wholesome  satire,  which  "purifies  itself  in  the 
rays  of  good  sense  " — for  good  sense  is  there,  with 
warmth,  and  glow,  and  light.  The  Epistle  to  Ra- 
cine after  the  production  of  Phedre  should  be  read; 
it  is  a  magnificent  triumph  of  the  sane  sentiment  of 
justice,  a  masterpiece  of  critical  poesy,  alternately 
sparkling,  inflaming,  harmonious,  affecting,  and  fra- 
ternal. But  above  all,  his  beautiful  lines  on  the  death 
of  Moliere  should  be  re-read — lines  on  which  there 
must  have  fallen  an  avenging  tear,  a  tear  of  Boileau. 

We  reach,  in  the  Epistle  to  Racine,  the  height  of 
Boileau's  glory  and  of  his  vocation.  He  rises  there 
to  his  highest  rank,  the  centre  of  a  group  of  the  illus- 
trious of  the  epoch;  calm,  equitable,  sure,  powerfully 
firm  in  his  own  style,  which  he  has  gradually 
enlarged,  envying  no  one,  distributing  soberly  his 
awards,  classing  even  those  who  are  above  him — his 
datitem  jura  Catonem  ;  master  of  the  choir,  as  Mon- 
taigne says;  one  of  those  men  to  whom  authority  is 
delegated,  and  whose  every  word  bears  weight. 

We  can  distinguish  three  periods  in  Boileau's  ca- 
reer: the  first,  which  extends  to  about  the  year  1667, 
is  that  of  the  pure  satirist,  of  the  audacious,  morose 


Botleau.  275 

young  man,  rather  narrow  in  his  views,  just  escaping 
from  a  lawyer's  office  and  still  too  close  to  the  courts, 
busy  with  rhyming  and  ridiculing  silly  rhymers,  in 
putting  them  in  the  pillory  of  his  hemistichs,  in 
painting  in  relief,  and  with  precision,  the  external 
absurdities  of  his  quarter,  and  in  naming  very  loudly 
the  pretenders  of  his  acquaintance:  "  I  call  a  cat  a  cat, 
and  Rolet  a  swindler." 

The  second  period,  that  from  1669  to  1677,  includes 
the  satirist  still,  but  a  satirist  who  grows  more  and 
more  placable;  showing  circumspection  and  discretion 
as  he  reaches  fame;  already  on  a  good  footing  at 
Court;  becoming  more  wisely  critical  in  every  sense, 
legislator  of  Parnassus  in  his  Art  Poetique,  and  more 
philosophical  in  his  broader  view  of  man  (Epistle  to 
Guilleragues),  capable  of  delightful  idleness  and  the 
varied  enjoyments  of  country  life  (Epistle  to  M.  de  La- 
moignon),  whose  imagination,  reposed  but  not  cooled, 
still  combines  and  invents  fearless  pictures,  profound 
in  their  jocoseness,  of  a  skill  that  rises  to  supreme  per- 
fection, to  immortal  art.  The  first  four  cantos  of  the 
Lutrin  express  the  spirit  and  mind  of  Boileau  in  his 
honest  leisure,  in  his  serenity  and  his  freest  play,  in 
the  pleasant  calmness  and  the  first  glow  of  his  after- 
dinner  leisure. 

During  the  third  period,  coming  after  an  inaction 
of  several  years,  under  pretext  of  his  office  as  histo- 
riographer and  on  account  of  illness,  extinction  of 
voice,   both   physical   and    poetical,    Boileau   made   a 


276  JSotleaiu 

moderately  successful  return  to  poesy  (not  so  deplora- 
ble as  persons  have  chosen  to  say)  in  the  last  two 
cantos  of  the  Lutrin,  in  his  final  "Epistles"  and 
"Satires,"  L' Amour  de  Dieu,  and  the  melancholy 
Equivoque  ending  all. 

There  again,  ideas  and  subjects  fail  him  more,  per- 
haps, than  talent.  Even  in  his  disagreeable  Satire 
against  women,  I  have  heard  the  most  ardent  ad- 
mirers of  the  modern  picturesque  school  commend 
the  picture  of  sordid  avarice  so  hideously  shown  in 
the  persons  of  Tardieu  and  his  wife.  In  that  Satire 
there  are  some  fifty  lines  ^  la  Juvenal,  which  do  not 
pale  as  we  read  them,  even  after  we  have  read  Eu- 
genie Grandet  or  looked  at  some  startling  canvas  of 
Eugene  Delacroix. 

But  of  this  third  and  last  period  of  Boileau,  in  which 
he  allied  himself  more  closely  with  Port-Royal  and 
the  Jansenist  cause,  I  shall  say  but  little  here,  the  sub- 
ject being  too  private  and  thankless.  Moreover,  it  is 
one  that  1  have  long  laid  aside  for  the  future.' 

What  was  Boileau  at  Court  and  in  society  in  his 
best  days,  before  increasing  infirmities  and  a  gloomy 
old  age  overtook  him  ?  He  was  full  of  frank  speech, 
witty  sayings,  and  repartee;  he  spoke  with  ardour, 
but  solely  on  subjects  that  he  had  at  heart,  that  is 
to  say,  on  literary  matters.  The  talk  once  launched 
upon  them,  he  put  no  restraint  upon  himself  Mme. 
de  Sevigne  tells  us  of  a  dinner  at  which  Boileau, 
'  See  "  History  of  Port-Royal,"  vol.  v.,  book  vi.,  chap.  7. 


JQSoileau.  277 

arguing  with  a  Jesuit  on  tlie  subject  of  Pascal,  gave  a 
scene  of  most  excellent  and  naive  comedy  at  the 
expense  of  the  priest.  Boileau  carried  his  verses  in 
his  mind,  and  recited  them  long  before  he  put  them 
on  paper;  in  fact,  he  did  better  than  recite  them,  he 
acted  them,  so  to  speak.  One  day,  being  in  bed  (for 
he  rose  late),  he  repeated  to  Arnauld,  who  came  to 
see  him,  the  whole  of  his  third  Epistle,  in  which 
occurs  the  fine  passage  that  ends  with  the  words: 

"  Hasten!  time  is  flying  and  drags  us  with  it: 
This  moment  when  I  speak  is  gone  already." 

He  recited  those  last  lines  in  so  airy  and  rapid  a  tone 
that  Arnauld,  naif  and  ardent,  easily  moved,  and  a 
good  deal  of  a  novice  in  the  beauties  of  French  poesy, 
jumped  from  his  chair  and  made  two  or  three  turns 
about  the  room  as  if  in  pursuit  of  the  flying  moment. 
In  the  same  way,  Boileau  recited  to  Pere  La  Chaise 
his  theological  Epistle  on  the  love  of  God  in  such 
a  way  that  he  obtained  (a  more  difficult  matter)  his 
entire  approbation. 

"Doctors  ought  to  order  champagne,"  said  Boileau, 
"to  those  who  have  no  intellect,  just  as  they  order 
asses'  milk  to  those  who  have  no  health;  the  first 
remedy  would  be  surer  than  the  other."  Boileau, 
in  his  best  days,  did  not  hate  champagne,  good  cheer, 
and  the  bustle  of  social  life;  he  spared  himself  less  in 
that  respect  than  his  friend  Racine,  who  took  care  of 
his  health  to  excess,  and  was  always  in  fear  of  falling 


278  Bolleau. 

ill.  Boileau  had  more  animation  in  society,  more 
social  spirits  than  Racine;  he  let  himself  go  to  its 
pleasures.  Until  he  was  quite  advanced  in  life  he 
received  those  who  liked  to  listen  to  him  and  to  make 
a  circle  round  him  with  pleasure.  "He  is  happy  as 
a  king,"  said  Racine,  "in  his  solitude,  or  rather  his 
inn  at  Auteuil.  1  call  it  so,  because  there  is  never  a 
day  when  there  is  not  some  new  guest,  often  two  or 
three,  who  do  not  even  know  each  other.  He  is 
happy  in  adapting  himself  thus  to  everybody.  As  for 
me,  I  should  have  sold  that  house  a  hundred  times." 
Boileau  ended  by  selling  it,  but  only  after  his  infirmi- 
ties had  made  life  in  it  more  difficult,  and  conversation 
positively  painful.  The  extinction  of  voice,  which 
sent  him  to  the  Baths  of  Bourbon  in  the  summer 
of  1687,  brought  out  the  interest  that  the  great  people 
of  the  kingdom  took  in  him.  The  king  at  table  often 
inquired  about  his  health;  the  princes  and  princesses 
also:  "You  were,"  writes  Racine,  "the  topic  of 
conversation  during  half  the  dinner." 

In  1677  Boileau  was  appointed,  with  Racine,  to 
write  the  History  of  the  king's  campaigns.  At  first, 
the  courtiers  made  merry  at  the  sight  of  the  two 
poets,  on  horseback,  following  the  army,  or  in  the 
trenches,  conscientiously  studying  the  subject.  A 
thousand  tales,  true  or  false,  and  doubtless  much 
embellished,  were  told  about  them.  Here  is  one 
which  is  quite  new;  I  take  it  from  an  unpublished 
letter  of  Pere  Quesnel  to  Arnauld ;  this  time  the  two 


3Boileau.  279 

poets  are  not  with  the  army,  but  simply  at  Versailles, 
where,  nevertheless,  the  following  misadventure  over- 
took them: 

"  Mme.  de  Montespan,"  writes  Pere  Quesnel  in  1680,  "has  two 
bears,  wliich  come  and  go  as  they  please.  They  passed  one  night  in  a 
magnificent  apartment  that  was  being  prepared  for  Mile,  de  Fontanges. 
The  painters,  on  leaving  their  work  at  night,  forgot  to  close  the  doors; 
those  who  have  charge  of  the  apartments  were  as  careless  as  the 
painters;  so  the  bears,  finding  the  doors  open,  went  in  and  ruined 
everything.  The  next  day  it  was  said  that  the  bears  had  avenged 
their  mistress,  and  other  poetic  nonsense.  Those  who  ought  to  have 
closed  the  doors  were  well  scolded,  so  they  resolved  to  close  them 
early  in  future.  As  much  was  said  about  the  great  damage  done  by 
the  bears,  great  numbers  of  people  went  to  see  it,  MM.  Despreaux 
[Boileau]  and  Racine  among  them,  towards  evening.  Going  from 
room  to  room,  absorbed  in  curiosity,  or  in  pleasant  conversation,  they 
took  no  notice  when  the  outer  doors  were  locked,  so  that  when  they 
wanted  to  leave  they  could  not  do  so.  They  shouted  through  the 
windows,  but  nobody  heard  them.  Finally,  the  two  poets  bivouacked 
where  the  bears  had  the  night  before,  and  had  leisure  to  think  of  their 
past  poesy  or  their  future  History." 

This  tale  shows  that  the  subject  of  Boileau  is  not  so 
uniformly  grave  and  sad  as  one  might  think.  Louis 
XIV,  in  protecting  Boileau  by  his  esteem,  would  not 
have  allowed  him  to  be  seriously  hurt  by  the  Court 
jesters.  The  fine  royal  sense  of  the  one  appreciated 
the  sound  literary  sense  of  the  other.  In  1683,  Boileau, 
then  forty-seven  years  old,  did  not  belong  to  the 
Academy;  he  was  paying  the  penalty  of  his  early 
Satires.  Louis  XIV  was  out  of  patience  with  the 
delay.  A  vacancy  occurred.  La  Fontaine,  competing 
for  it  with  Boileau,  being  accepted  on  the  first  ballot 
and  proposed  to  the  king  as  subject,  or  member  (this 


28o  JSoileau, 

was  then  the  custom),  an  adjournment  was  had  to 
receive  the  decision  of  the  monarch,  after  which  the 
second  balloting  of  the  Academy  would  take  place. 
In  the  interval,  another  vacancy  occurred;  the  Acad- 
emy named  Despreaux  and  presented  his  name  to  the 
king,  who  said  immediately  that  "the  choice  was 
very  agreeable  to  him  and  would  be  universally  ap- 
proved." "You  can,"  he  added,  "receive  La  Fontaine 
at  once;  he  has  promised  to  conduct  himself  properly." 
But  during  the  six  months  that  had  elapsed  between 
the  two  elections,  the  king  (remarks  d'Olivet)  scarcely 
allowed  his  own  inclination  to  be  seen,  "because  he 
had  made  a  rule  to  himself  not  to  influence  the  suf- 
frages of  the  Academy."  We  have  since  known 
kings  who  were  less  delicate  in  that  matter  than 
Louis  XIV. 

Let  us  recognise  and  hail  in  these  days  the  strong 
and  noble  harmony  of  the  great  century.  Without 
Boileau,  and  without  Louis  XIV,  who  regarded 
Boileau  as  his  Controller-General  of  Parnassus,  what 
would  have  happened  ?  Would  the  great  talents 
themselves  have  fully  rendered  all  that  now  forms 
their  most  solid  heritage  of  glory?  Racine,  I  fear, 
would  have  made  another  Berenice;  La  Fontaine  fewer 
Fables  and  more  Contes  ;  Moliere  himself  might  have 
stayed  longer  with  his  Scapins  and  might  never  have 
risen  to  the  stern  heights  of  the  Misanthrope.  In  a 
word,  each  of  those  great  geniuses  would  have  yielded 
more  to  his  defects.     Boileau,  that  is  to  say,  the  good 


JBoilcau.  281 

sense  of  the  critic-poet,  authorised  and  backed  by 
that  of  the  great  king,  restrained  them  all,  and  com- 
pelled them,  by  his  respected  presence,  to  do  their 
best  and  gravest  works.  Know  you  what  it  is  that, 
in  our  day,  is  lacking  to  our  poets,  so  full  at  their 
start  of  natural  faculties  and  happy  inspirations  and 
promises?  They  lack  a  Boileau  and  an  enlightened 
monarch;  the  one  supporting  and  sanctioning  the 
other.  Thus  our  men  of  talent,  feeling  themselves  in 
a  period  of  anarchy  and  want  of  discipline,  quickly 
follow  suit;  they  behave,  strictly  speaking,  not  like 
noble  geniuses,  or  like  men,  but  like  schoolboys  in 
the  holidays.     We  see  the  result. 

Boileau,  growing  old  and  morose,  believed  that 
sound  taste  was  already  compromised,  and  declared, 
to  whoso  would  hear  him,  that  French  poesy  was 
decadent.  When  he  died,  March  13,  171 1,  he  had 
long  despaired  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  his  suc- 
cessors. Was  it  a  mere  illusion  of  old  age  ?  Imag- 
ine Boileau  returning  to  the  world  in  the  middle  or 
towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  ask 
yourself  what  he  would  have  thought  of  the  poesy  of 
that  time.  Place  him,  in  idea,  under  the  Empire,  and  ask 
yourself  the  same  question.  It  has  always  seemed  to 
me  that  those  who  were  most  ardent  in  invoking  the 
authority  of  Boileau  were  not  those  whom  he  would 
most  surely  have  recognised  as  his  own.  The  man 
who  best  felt  and  commented  on  Boileau,  the  poet,  in 
the  eighteenth  century,   was  Le  Brun,   the  friend  of 


282  JBotleau. 

Andre  Chenier,  accused  of  too  much  audacity  by  pro- 
saic rliymesters.  Boileau  was  more  daring  and  more 
novel  than  most  people,  even  Andrieux,  thought. 

Let  us  leave  suppositions  that  have  no  precise  end 
and  no  solution  possible.  Let  us  take  literary  things, 
such  as  they  come  to  us  to-day,  in  their  confusion  and 
piecemeal  condition;  isolated  and  weakened  as  we 
are,  let  us  accept  them  with  all  their  burdens,  all 
their  faults,  including  our  own  faults  also,  and  our 
errors  in  the  past.  But,  things  being  as  they  are,  let 
those  who  feel  within  them  some  share  of  the  courage- 
and  good  sense  of  Boileau  and  the  men  of  his  race  not 
fail  nor  weaken.  There  is  a  race  of  men  who,  when: 
they  discover  beside  them  a  vice,  a  folly,  literary  or 
moral,  keep  it  secret,  and  think  only  of  making  use  of 
it,  and  of  quietly  profiting  through  life  by  self-inter- 
ested flattery  or  alliances;  these  are  the  greater  num- 
ber. But  there  is  yet  another  race  who,  seeing  the 
false  and  accepted  hypocrisy,  have  no  peace  until,, 
under  one  form  or  another,  truth  as  they  feel  it  is 
brought  out  and  proffered.  Be  it  a  question  of  rhymes, 
only,  or  of  things  more  serious,  let  us  belong  to  that, 
race. 


X. 

IRacine* 


283 


X. 

IRacine. 

THE  great  poets,  the  poets  of  genius,  independ- 
ently of  their  class,  and  without  regard  to  their 
nature,  lyric,  epic,  or  dramatic,  may  be  divided 
into  two  glorious  families  which,  for  many  centuries, 
have  alternately  intermingled  and  dethroned  one  an- 
another,  contending  for  pre-eminence  in  fame:  be- 
tween them,  according  to  periods,  the  admiration  of 
men  has  been  unequally  awarded.  The  primitive 
poets,  the  founders,  the  unmixed  originals,  born  of 
themselves  and  sons  of  their  own  works, —  Homer, 
Pindar,  y^schylus,  Dante,  and  Shakespeare, — are  some- 
times neglected,  often  preferred,  but  are  always  con- 
trary to  the  studious,  polished,  docile  geniuses  of  the 
middle  epochs,  essentially  capable  of  being  educated 
and  perfected.  Horace,  Virgil,  and  Tassoare  the  most 
brilliant  heads  of  this  secondary  family,  reputed,  and 
with  reason,  inferior  to  its  elder,  but,  as  a  usual  thing, 
better  understood  by  all,  more  accessible,  more  cher- 
ished. In  France,  Corneille  and  Moliere  are  detached 
from  it  on  more  sides  than  one;  Boileau  and  Racine 

285 


286  IRacine. 

belong  to  it  wholly  and  adorn  it,  especially  Racine, 
the  most  accomplished  of  the  class,  the  most  venerated 
of  our  poets. 

It  is  the  peculiar  property  of  writers  of  this  second- 
ary order  to  win  for  themselves  almost  a  unanimity 
of  suffrages,  while  their  illustrious  opponents,  higher 
than  they  in  merit,  above  them  in  fame  and  glory,  are, 
nevertheless,  brought  into  question  in  each  new  epoch 
by  a  certain  class  of  critics.  This  difference  in  re- 
nown is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  difference  of 
talents.  The  ones  truly  predestined  and  divine  are 
born  with  their  lot;  they  are  not  concerned  to  enlarge 
it  inch  by  inch  in  this  life;  they  dispense  profusely, 
and  as  if  by  both  hands ;  for  their  inward  treasury  is  in- 
exhaustible. Without  disquieting  themselves,  without 
rendering  to  their  own  minds  a  close  account  of  their 
means  of  doing,  they  do.  Their  thoughts  are  not 
turned  inward;  their  heads  are  not  turned  back  to 
measure  the  way  by  which  they  came  and  calculate 
how  much  still  lies  before  them;  but  they  make  long 
marches,  never  wearying,  and  never  content  with 
what  they  do.  Secret  things  take  place  within  them — 
in  the  breast  of  their  genius  —  and  sometimes  trans- 
form it.  They  undergo  these  changes  without  taking 
part  in  them,  without  aiding  them  artificially,  any 
more  than  man  can  hasten  the  time  when  his  hair 
whitens,  the  birds  the  time  when  their  plumage  moults, 
or  trees  the  change  of  colour  in  their  leafage  at  the 
divers  seasons.     And,  proceeding  thus,  by  some  great 


RACINE. 
From  a  steel  engraving. 


IRacine.  287 

inward  law,  some  premature,  potent  principle,  they 
come  at  last  to  leave  the  traces  of  their  force  in  sub- 
lime monumental  works;  works  of  a  real  and  stable 
order  beneath  an  apparent  irregularity,  as  in  Nature, 
intersected  with  gullies,  bristling  with  crags,  hollowed 
into  depths  —  thus  is  it  with  those  of  one  glorious 
family. 

The  others  need  to  be  born  under  propitious  cir- 
cumstances, to  be  cultivated  by  education,  and  to 
ripen  in  the  sun.  They  develop  slowly,  knowingly, 
fertilising  themselves  by  study,  and  give  birth  them- 
selves to  art.  They  rise  by  degrees;  follow  each  step 
of  the  way,  and  never  spring  to  their  goal  at  abound; 
their  genius  enlarges  with  time,  and  erects  itself  by 
degrees,  like  a  palace  to  which  each  year  a  course  is 
added;  they  have  long  hours  of  reflection  and  of 
silence,  during  which  they  pause  to  revise  their  plan 
and  deliberate;  so  the  edifice,  if  it  is  ever  completed, 
is  a  noble,  learned,  lucid,  admirable  conception,  of  a 
harmony  that  charms  the  eye,  and  perfect  in  execu- 
tion. To  understand  it,  the  mind  of  the  spectator 
discovers  without  difficulty,  and  mounts  with  a  sort 
of  placid  pride  the  ladder  of  ideas  up  which  has  gone 
the  genius  of  the  architect. 

Now,  according  to  a  very  shrewd  and  very  just 
remark  of  Pere  Tournemine,  we  admire  in  an  author 
only  those  qualities  of  which  we  have  the  root  and 
the  germ  within  us.  Hence  it  follows  that,  in  the 
works  of  the  great,  superior  souls,  there  is  a  relative 


288  TRacine. 

level  to  which  each  inward  spirit  can  rise,  but  can- 
not go  beyond;  a  spot  whence  it  must  judge  of  the 
great  whole  as  it  can.  This  is  somewhat  as  it  is  with 
the  families  of  plants  living  at  different  elevations  on 
the  Cordilleras;  each  unable  to  pass  above  a  given 
height;  or  rather  as  it  is  with  families  of  birds  whose 
soaring  in  the  air  is  fixed  at  a  certain  limit. 

Now  if,  at  the  relative  height  to  which  each  class  of 
minds  can  rise  in  understanding  a  poem,  no  corre- 
sponding quality  is  found  to  act  as  a  stepping-stone, 
a  platform,  from  which  to  contemplate  the  country 
round,  if  there  are  jagged  peaks,  a  torrent,  a  gulf, 
what  happens  ?  Minds  that  have  found  no  rest  for 
their  feet  will  return,  like  the  dove  to  the  ark,  without 
so  much  as  an  olive  twig: — I  am  at  Versailles,  on  the 
garden  side;  1  mount  the  grand  stairway;  breath  fails 
me  half-way  up,  and  I  stop;  but  at  last  I  see  before 
me  the  lines  of  the  chateau,  its  wings;  I  appreci- 
ate their  symmetry;  whereas  if  I  climb,  from  the 
banks  of  the  Rhine,  some  winding  path  that  leads  to 
a  Gothic  dungeon,  and  stop  short,  breathless,  half- 
way up,  it  may  be  that  a  rise  of  ground,  a  tree,  a 
bush  will  hide  the  whole  view  from  me.  That  is  a 
true  image  of  the  two  poesies. 

Racinian  poesy  is  so  constructed  that  at  every  height 
are  stepping-stones,  and  places  of  support  for  weak- 
lings. Shakespeare's  work  is  rougher  of  approach; 
the  eye  cannot  take  it  in  on  all  sides;  I  know  very 
worthy  persons  who  toil  and  sweat  to  climb  it,  and 


1Raclne»  289 

after  striking  against  crag  or  bush,  come  back  swear- 
ing in  good  faith  that  there  was  nothing  higher  up ;  but, 
no  sooner  are  they  down  upon  the  plain  than  that 
cursed  enchantment  tower  appears  to  them  once  more 
in  the  distance,  a  thousand  times  more  imperatively 
than  those  of  Montlhery  to  Boileau.  But  let  us  leave 
Shakespeare  and  such  comparisons  and  try  to  mount, 
after  many  worshippers,  a  few  of  the  steps,  slippery 
from  long  usage,  that  lead  to  Racine's  marble  temple. 

Born  at  La  Ferte-Milon  in  1639,  Racine  was  or- 
phaned at  a  very  tender  age.  His  mother,  daughter 
of  a  king's  attorney  at  Villers-Cotterets,  and  his  father, 
controller  of  the  salt  stores  at  Ferte-Milon,  died  very 
nearly  together.  At  four  years  of  age  he  was  confided 
to  the  care  of  his  maternal  grandfather,  who  put  him, 
while  still  very  young,  to  school  in  Beauvais.  After 
the  old  man's  death,  he  was  taken  to  Port-Royal-des- 
Champs,  where  his  grandmother  and  one  of  his  aunts 
had  retired.  It  is  from  there  that  the  first  interesting 
details  of  his  childhood  have  been  transmitted  to  us. 
The  illustrious  recluse,  Antoine  Le  Maitre,  felt  a  special 
regard  for  him,  as  we  see  by  a  letter  that  he  wrote 
him  during  one  of  the  persecutions,  in  which  letter 
he  urged  him  to  be  docile,  and  to  take  good  care, 
during  his  absence,  of  his  eleven  volumes  of  Saint 
Chrysostom. 

The  "little  Racine  "  soon  learned  to  read  the  Greek 
authors  in  the  original;  he  made  extracts  and  annota- 
tions in  his  own  writing,  and  learned  them  by  heart; 


290  IRacfne. 

first,  Plutarch,  then  the  "Banquet"  of  Plato,  with 
Saint  Basil  and  Pindar  in  turn,  and  in  his  idle  hours 
"  Theagenes  and  Chariclea."  Already  he  revealed 
his  reserved,  innocent,  and  dreamy  nature  by  lonely 
walks,  book  in  hand  (which  he  did  not  always  read), 
through  those  beautiful  solitudes  of  which  he  felt  the 
sweetness  even  to  tears.  His  dawning  talent  was  ex- 
ercised at  that  time  in  translating  the  touching  hymns 
of  the  Breviary  into  French  verse,  which  he  afterwards 
retouched;  but  above  all,  he  delighted  in  celebrating 
in  verse  Port-Royal,  the  landscape,  the  ponds,  the 
gardens,  and  the  meadows.  These  youthful  produc- 
tions show  true  sentiment  beneath  extreme  inexperi- 
ence and  weakness  of  expression  and  colour;  with  a 
little  attention  we  can  distinguish  in  certain  places 
a  far-off  echo,  a  prelude,  as  it  were,  to  the  melodious 
choruses  of  Esther. 

He  left  Port-Royal  after  three  years'  stay,  and  came 
to  do  his  course  in  logic  at  the  college  of  Harcourt 
in  Paris.  The  pious  and  stern  impressions  he  had  re- 
ceived from  his  first  masters  weakened  by  degrees  in 
the  new  world  by  which  he  was  carried  along.  His 
intimacies  with  amiable  and  dissipated  young  men, 
with  the  Abbe  Le  Vasseur  and  La  Fontaine,  whom 
he  knew  from  that  time,  gave  him  more  and  more  a 
taste  for  poesy,  romances,  and  the  theatre.  He  wrote 
gallant  sonnets,  concealed  from  Port-Royal  and  the 
Jansenists,  who  were  writing  him,  meanwhile,  letters 
upon  letters  with  threats  of  anathema.     We  find  him. 


IRacine.  291 

in  1660,  in  communication  with  the  actors  of  the 
Marais  about  a  play  the  name  of  which  has  not  come 
down  to  us.  His  ode  on  the  Nymphes  de  la  Seine, 
written  for  the  marriage  of  the  king,  was  sent  to 
Chapelain,  who  "received  it  with  all  the  kindness  in 
the  world,  and,  ill  as  he  was,  kept  it  three  days  to 
make  remarks  upon  it  in  writing,"  The  most  im- 
portant of  these  remarks  related  to  the  Tritons,  who 
never  lived  in  rivers,  only  in  the  sea.  This  poem  won 
for  Racine  the  protection  of  Chapelain,  and  a  gift  in 
money  from  Colbert. 

His  cousin,  Vitart,  intendant  of  the  Chateau  of 
Chevreuse,  sent  him  to  that  castle  on  one  occasion  to 
take  his  place  in  superintending  masons,  glaziers,  and 
other  workmen.  The  poet  was  already  so  used  to 
the  bustle  of  Paris  that  he  considered  Chevreuse  a 
place  of  exile,  and  dated  his  letters  "  from  Babylon." 
He  relates  that  he  goes  to  the  wine-shop  two  or  three 
times  a  day,  paying  the  score  of  every  one,  and  that  a 
lady  has  taken  him  for  a  sergeant;  then  he  adds:  "I 
read  poesy,  I  try  to  make  it;  I  read  the  adventures 
of  Ariosto,  and  I  am  not  without  adventures  of  my 
own." 

All  his  friends  at  Port-Royal,  his  aunt,  his  masters, 
seeing  him  thus  on  the  high-road  to  perdition,  con- 
sulted together  to  get  him  out  of  it.  They  repre- 
sented to  him  vehemently  the  necessity  of  a  profession, 
and  they  induced  him  to  go  to  Uzes  in  Languedoc, 
to   stay  with   a   maternal   uncle,    a  canon   of  Saint- 


292  IRacine. 

Genevieve,  with  hope  of  a  benefice.  We  find  him  at 
Uzes  during  the  winter  of  1661  and  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1662,  clothed  in  black  from  head  to  foot, 
reading  Saint  Thomas  Aquinas  to  please  the  good 
canon,  and  Ariosto  and  Euripides  to  comfort  him- 
self ;  much  caressed  by  all  the  teachers  and  all  the 
priests  of  the  neighbourhood  on  account  of  his  uncle, 
and  consulted  by  all  the  poets  and  all  the  lovers  of 
the  regions  roundabout  concerning  their  verses,  on 
account  of  his  little  Parisian  reputation  and  his  cele- 
brated ode  on  ' '  Peace  " :  for  the  rest,  going  out  but  little, 
wearying  of  a  dull  town,  all  the  inhabitants  of  which 
seemed  to  him  hard  and  selfish;  comparing  himself 
to  Ovid  on  the  shores  of  the  Euxine,  and  fearing 
nothing  so  much  as  to  corrupt,  through  listening  to 
the  patois  of  the  South,  the  excellent,  true  French, 
that  pure  flour  of  wheat  on  which  men  are  nourished 
around  Chateau-Thierry,  Ferte-Milon,  and  Reims. 

Nature  herself  was  only  moderately  attractive  to 
him.  "  If  the  country  had  a  little  delicacy,  if  the  rocks 
were  a  little  less  frequent,  I  might  take  it  for  the 
land  of  Cythera."  But  the  rocks  oppress  him,  the 
heat  chokes  him,  the  grasshoppers  are  louder  than 
the  nightingales.  He  thinks  the  passions  of  the  South 
violent  and  carried  to  excess;  as  for  him,  sensible  and 
moderate,  he  lives  in  silence  and  reflection;  he  keeps 
his  room  and  reads  much,  and  does  not  even  feel  the 
need  of  composing.  His  letters  to  the  Abbe  Le  Vas- 
seur  are  cold,  refined,  correct,  flowery,  mythological, 


IRactnc.  293 

and  slightly  satirical ;  the  sentimental  bel  esprit  that  is 
to  blossom  out  in  Berenice  is  perceptible  throughout; 
there  are  numerous  Italian  quotations  and  gallant  allu- 
sions; but  no  indecency  such  as  young  men  allow  to 
escape  them,  not  a  single  ignoble  detail;  all  is  exqui- 
sitely elegant  in  its  closest  familiarity.  The  women  of 
the  region  dazzled  him  at  first,  and  a  few  days  after 
his  arrival  he  wrote  to  La  Fontaine  the  following  re- 
marks, which  give  food  for  thought: 

"  All  the  women  are  brilliant,  and  they  dress  themselves  in  the  most 
natural  way  in  the  world;  as  for  their  persons,  color  verus,  corpus 
solidem  et  sued  plenum;  but  as  the  first  thing  that  was  said  to  me  was 
to  be  on  my  guard,  I  do  not  wish  to  say  more  about  them.  Besides, 
it  would  be  profaning  the  house  of  a  beneficed  priest,  in  which  I  live, 
to  make  a  long  discourse  on  the  matter:  Domus  mea,  domus  orationis. 
That  is  why  you  must  expect  1  shall  say  no  more  to  you  on  this  sub- 
ject. I  was  told:  '  Be  blind.'  If  I  can't  be  that  entirely,  I  can  at  least 
be  mute;  for,  don't  you  see?  one  must  be  monk  with  monks,  just  as 
1  was  wolf  with  you  and  the  other  wolves  of  your  pack." 

But  his  naturally  chaste  and  reserved  habits  pre- 
vailed when  he  was  not  led  away  by  companions  in 
pleasure.  A  few  months  later  he  answers  very  seri- 
ously a  jesting  insinuation  of  the  Abbe  Le  Vasseur, 
that,  God  be  thanked!  his  liberty  was  still  safe,  and 
that  when  he  left  that  region  he  should  bring  back  his 
heart  as  sound  and  whole  as  he  brought  it;  and  there- 
upon he  relates  a  recent  danger  which  his  weakness 
had  happily  escaped.  The  passage  is  little  known, 
and  it  casts  enough  light  into  Racine's  soul  to  make  it 
worth  quoting  at  length : 


294  IRacinc. 

"  There  is  a  young  lady  here  very  well  made,  with  a  fine  figure. 
1  had  never  seen  her  nearer  than  five  or  six  feet,  and  1  thought  her  very 
handsome;  her  skin  seemed  to  me  bright  and  dazzling;  her  eyes  large, 
of  a  fine  black,  her  throat,  and  the  rest  that  is  uncovered  rather  freely 
in  this  region,  very  white.  I  had  always  had  a  somewhat  tender  idea 
of  her,  approaching  to  an  inclination;  but  I  saw  her  only  in  church, 
for,  as  1  have  told  you,  I  am  rather  solitary,  more  so  than  my  cousin 
advised.  At  last  I  wished  to  see  whether  or  not  1  was  mistaken  in 
the  idea  I  had  of  her,  and  1  found  a  very  civil  occasion;  1  approached 
her  and  spoke  to  her. 

"  What  I  am  telling  you  happened  not  quite  a  month  ago,  and  I 
had  no  other  intention  than  to  see  what  sort  of  answer  she  would 
make  to  me.  I  spoke  to  her  with  indifference,  but  as  soon  as  I  opened 
my  mouth  and  looked  at  her  I  became  confused.  I  saw  upon  her  face 
certain  blotches,  as  if  she  was  just  getting  well  of  an  illness,  and  that 
made  me  change  my  ideas.  Nevertheless,  I  remained  there,  and  she 
answered  me  with  a  very  gentle  and  very  obliging  air;  and,  to  tell 
you  the  truth,  1  must  have  taken  her  on  some  bad  day,  for  she  is 
thought  very  handsome  in  the  town;  and  I  know  several  young  men 
who  sigh  for  her  from  the  depths  of  their  heart.  She  is  even  thought 
one  of  the  most  virtuous  and  gayest  in  the  town.  But  I  am  very  glad 
of  this  encounter,  which  has  served  to  deliver  me  from  a  certain  be- 
ginning of  agitation;  for  I  am  studying  now  to  live  rather  more 
reasonably,  and  not  let  myself  be  carried  away  by  all  sorts  of  objects. 
i  begin  my  novitiate.     .     .     ." 

Racine  was  then  twenty-three  years  old.  The 
naivete  of  his  impressions  and  childlike  heart  that 
appears  in  the  above  narration  marks  a  point  of  de- 
parture, whence  he  advanced  gradually,  by  dint  of 
experience  and  study,  until  he  reached  the  utmost 
profundity  of  the  same  passion  in  Phedre.  His  no- 
vitiate, however,  was  never  completed.  He  grew 
weary  of  awaiting  a  benefice  that  was  always  pro- 
mised but  never  came;  so,  leaving  the  canon  and 
the   promises,   he    returned   to  Paris,  where  his  ode 


IRacine.  295 

on  La  Renommde  aux  Muses  won  him  another  gift  of 
money,  an  entrance  at  Court,  and  the  acquaintance 
of  Boileau  and  Moliere.  The  Thebaide  followed 
rapidly. 

Until  then,  Racine  had  found  on  his  path  none  but 
protectors  and  friends.  But  his  first  dramatic  success 
awakened  envy,  and  from  that  moment  his  career 
was  full  of  perplexities  and  vexations  which  his 
irritable  susceptibility  more  than  once  embittered. 
The  tragedy  of  Alexandre  estranged  him  from  Mo- 
liere and  Corneille  ;  from  Moliere,  because  he  with- 
drew the  play  from  him  and  gave  it  to  the  actors 
of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne;  with  Corneille,  because 
the  illustrious  old  man  declared  to  the  young  man, 
after  listening  to  the  reading  of  the  piece,  that  it 
showed  great  talent  for  poesy  in  general,  but  not  for 
the  stage.  When  it  was  performed,  the  partisans  of 
Corneille  endeavoured  to  hinder  its  success.  Some 
said  that  Taxile  was  not  an  honourable  man;  others 
that  he  did  not  deserve  his  fate;  some  that  Alexandre 
was  not  lover-like  enough;  others  that  he  never  came 
upon  the  scene  except  to  talk  of  love.  When  An- 
dromaque  appeared,  Pyrrhus  was  reproached  for  a 
lingering  of  ferocity ;  they  wanted  him  more  polished, 
more  gallant,  more  uniform  in  character.  This  was 
a  consequence  of  Corneille's  system,  which  made  all 
his  personages  of  one  piece,  wholly  good  or  wholly 
bad  from  head  to  foot;  to  which  Racine  replied,  with 
good  judgment: 


296  IRactne. 

"  Aristotle,  far  from  asking  us  for  perfect  heroes,  wishes,  on  the 
contrary,  that  the  tragic  personages,  that  is  to  say,  those  whose  mis- 
fortune makes  the  catastrophe  of  the  tragedy,  shall  be  neither  very 
good  nor  very  bad.  He  does  not  wish  them  to  be  extremely  good, 
because  the  punishment  of  a  good  man  would  excite  more  indignation 
than  pity  in  the  spectators;  nor  that  they  be  bad  to  excess,  because 
no  one  can  feel  pity  for  a  scoundrel.  They  should  therefore  have  a 
mediocre  goodness,  that  is  to  say,  a  virtue  capable  of  weakness,  so 
that  they  fall  into  misfortune  through  some  fault  that  causes  them  to 
be  pitied  and  not  detested." 

I  dwell  on  this  point,  because  the  great  innovation 
of  Racine,  and  his  incontestable  dramatic  originality, 
consist  precisely  in  this  reduction  of  heroic  person- 
ages to  proportions  more  human,  more  natural,  and 
in  a  delicate  analysis  of  the  secret  shades  of  sentiment 
and  passion.  That  which,  above  all,  distinguishes 
Racine,  in  the  composition  of  style  as  in  that  of 
the  drama,  is  logical  sequence,  the  uninterrupted 
connection  of  ideas  and  sentiments;  in  him  all  is  filled 
up,  leaving  no  void,  argued  without  reply;  never  is 
there  any  chance  to  be  surprised  by  those  abrupt 
changes,  those  sudden  volte-faces  of  which  Corneille 
made  frequent  abuse  in  the  play  of  his  characters  and 
the  progression  of  his  drama. 

I  am,  nevertheless,  far  from  asserting  that,  even  in 
this,  all  the  advantage  of  the  stage  was  on  the  side 
ot  Racine;  but  when  he  appeared,  novelty  was  in 
his  favour,  a  novelty  admirably  adapted  to  the  taste 
of  a  Court  in  which  were  many  weaknesses,  where 
nothing  shone  that  had  not  its  shadow,  and  the  amor- 
ous chronicle  of  which,  opened  by  a  La  Valiiere,  was 


IRactne*  297 

to  end  in  a  Maintenon.  It  will  always  remain  a  ques- 
tion whether  Racine's  observing,  inquiring  method, 
employed  to  the  exclusion  of  every  other,  is  dramatic 
in  the  absolute  sense  of  the  word;  for  my  part,  1 
think  it  is  not;  but  it  satisfied,  we  must  allow,  the 
society  of  those  days  which,  in  its  polished  idleness, 
did  not  demand  a  drama  more  agitating,  more  tem- 
pestuous, more  "transporting" — to  use  Mme.  de 
Sevigne's  language;  a  society  which  willingly  ac- 
cepted Berenice,  while  awaiting  Phedre,  the  master- 
piece of  Racine's  manner. 

Berenice  was  written  by  command  of  Madame 
[Henriette],  Duchesse  d'Orleans,  who  encouraged  all 
the  new  poets,  and  who,  on  this  occasion,  did  Cor- 
neille  the  ill-turn  of  bringing  him  into  the  lists  in 
contest  with  his  young  rival.  On  the  other  hand, 
Boileau,  a  sincere  and  faithful  friend,  defended  Racine 
against  the  clamouring  mob  of  writers,  upheld  him  in 
his  momentary  discouragements,  and  excited  him  by 
wise  severity  to  a  progress  without  intermission. 
This  daily  supervision  of  Boileau  would  assuredly 
have  been  fatal  to  an  author  of  freer  genius,  of  im- 
petuous warmth  or  careless  grace,  like  Moliere,  like 
La  Fontaine,  for  instance;  it  could  not  be  otherwise 
than  profitable  to  Racine,  who,  before  he  knew 
Boileau,  was  already  following  (save  for  a  few  Italian 
whimsicalities)  that  path  of  correctness  and  sustained 
elegance  in  which  the  latter  maintained  and  confirmed 
him.     1  think,  therefore,  that  Boileau  was  right  when 


298  IRacine, 

he  applauded  himself  for  having  taught  Racine  "to 
write  with  difficulty  easy  verses";  but  he  went  too 
far  if  he  gave  him,  as  it  was  asserted  that  he  did, 
"the  precept  of  writing  the  second  line  before  the 
first." 

After  Andromaque,  which  appeared  in  1667,  ten 
years  elapsed  before  Phedre,  the  triumph  of  which 
came  in  1677.  We  know  how  Racine  filled  those 
years.  Animated  by  youth  and  the  love  of  glory, 
spurred  by  his  admirers  as  well  as  by  his  rivals  and 
detractors,  he  gave  himself  up  wholly  to  the  devel- 
opment of  his  genius.  He  broke  completely  with 
Port-Royal;  and  apropos  of  an  attack  by  Nicole  on 
writers  for  the  stage,  he  flung  out  a  piquant  letter, 
which  caused  scandal  and  drew  down  upon  him  re- 
prisals. By  dint  of  waiting  and  soliciting  he  had  at 
last  obtained  a  benefice,  and  the  licence  for  the  first 
edition  of  Andromaque  was  granted  to  the  Sieur 
Racine,  prior  of  Epinai.  A  monk  disputed  his  right 
to  that  priory;  a  lawsuit  followed,  which  no  one  un- 
derstood; and  Racine,  weary  of  the  whole  business, 
desisted,  avenging  himself  on  the  judges  by  Les 
Plaideurs,  a  comedy  that  might  have  been  written  by 
Moliere;  an  admirable  farce,  the  handling  of  which 
reveals  a  hitherto-unperceived  side  of  the  poet,  and 
reminds  us  that  he  read  Rabelais,  Marot,  even  Scar- 
ron,  and  had  his  place  in  the  wine-shop  between 
Chapelle  and  La  Fontaine. 

This  busy  life,  with  its  solid  studies,  to  which  were 


IRacine,  299 

added  literary  quarrels,  visits  to  Court,  the  Academy 
after  1673,  and  perhaps,  as  some  have  suspected,  cer- 
tain tender  weaknesses  at  the  theatre — this  confusion 
of  vexations,  pleasures,  and  fame,  brought  Racine  to 
the  year  1677,  when  he  was  thirty-eight  years  old,  at 
which  period  he  broke  away  from  it  to  marry  and  be 
converted  in  a  Christian  manner. 

His  last  two  plays,  Iphigenie  and  Phedre,  had 
roused  a  fresh  storm  against  their  author;  all  the 
hissed  authors,  the  Jansenist  pamphleteers,  the  super- 
annuated great  seigneurs,  and  the  last  remains  of  the 
precieuses,  Boyer,  Leclerc,  Coras,  Perrin,  Pradon,  I 
was  about  to  say  Fontenelle,  Barbier-d'Aucour,  and 
above  all  (in  the  present  case),  the  Due  de  Nevers, 
Mme.  Des  Houlieres,  and  the  hotel  de  Bouillon,  rose 
up  in  arms  shamelessly,  and  the  unworthy  manoeuvres 
of  that  cabal  must  have  troubled  the  poet  not  a  little; 
but,  for  all  that,  his  plays  had  triumphed;  the  public 
went  to  them  and  applauded  them  in  tears.  Boileau, 
who  never  flattered,  even  in  friendship,  issued  a  mag- 
nificent letter  to  the  conquering  author,  "blessing" 
him,  and  declaring  the  century  that  saw  the  "birth 
of  his  stately  marvels  fortunate."  This  was,  there- 
fore, less  than  ever  the  moment  for  Racine  to  quit  the 
scene  that  resounded  with  his  name;  he  had  far  more 
ground  for  intoxication  than  for  literary  disappoint- 
ment; consequently,  his  resolution  was  absolutely 
free  from  the  sulky  ill-humour  to  which  some  have 
endeavoured  to  attribute  it. 


300  IRacine. 

For  some  time  past,  since  the  first  fire  of  youth,  the 
first  fervours  of  mind  and  senses  were  spent,  the 
memory  of  his  childhood,  of  his  masters,  of  his  aunt, 
the  nun  at  Port-Royal,  had  again  laid  hold  upon 
Racine's  heart;  and  the  involuntary  comparison  forced 
upon  him  between  his  peaceful  satisfaction  in  other 
days,  and  his  present  fame,  so  troubled  and  embit- 
tered, brought  him  to  regret  a  life  that  once  was 
regular.  This  secret  feeling,  working  within  him, 
can  be  seen  in  the  preface  to  Phedre,  and  must  have 
sustained  him,  more  than  we  know,  in  the  profound 
analysis  he  makes  in  that  play  of  the  "virtuous  sor- 
row" of  a  soul  that  sees  evil  and  yet  pursues  it.  His 
own  heart  explained  to  him  that  of  Phedre;  and  if  we 
suppose,  what  is  very  probable,  that  he  was  detained 
in  spite  of  himself  at  the  theatre  by  some  amorous 
attachment  he  could  not  shake  off,  the  resemblance 
becomes  closer,  and  helps  us  to  understand  all  that  he 
has  put  into  Phedre  of  anguish  actually  felt,  and  more 
personal  than  usual  in  the  struggles  of  passion. 

However  that  may  be,  the  moral  aim  of  Phedre  is 
beyond  a  doubt;  the  great  Arnauld  himself  could  not 
refrain  from  recognising  it,  and  thus  almost  verifying 
the  words  of  the  author,  who  "hoped,  by  means  of 
this  play  to  reconcile  a  quantity  of  celebrated  persons 
to  tragedy,  through  their  pity  and  their  doctrine." 
Nevertheless,  going  deeper  still  in  his  reflections  on 
reform,  Racine  judged  it  more  prudent  and  more  con- 
sistent to  quit  the  theatre,  and  he  did  so  with  courage, 


IRacine.  301 

but  without  too  much  effort.  He  married,  reconciled 
himself  with  Port-Royal,  prepared  himself  in  domestic 
life  for  the  duties  of  a  father,  and  when  Louis  XIV 
appointed  him,  at  the  same  time  as  Boileau,  his- 
toriographer, he  neglected  none  of  his  new  duties: 
with  these  in  view,  he  began  by  making  excerpts 
from  the  treatise  of  Lucian  on  "The  Manner  of  Writ- 
ing History,"  and  he  applied  himself  to  the  reading  of 
Mezeray,  Vittorio  Siri,  and  others. 

From  the  little  that  we  have  now  read  of  the  char- 
acter, the  morals,  and  the  habits  of  mind  of  Racine, 
it  is  easy  to  foretell  the  essential  fine  qualities  and  de- 
fects of  his  work,  to  perceive  to  what  he  might  have 
attained  and,  at  the  same  time,  in  what  he  was  likely 
to  be  lacking.  Great  art  in  constructing  a  plot;  exact 
calculation  in  its  arrangement;  slow  and  successive 
development  rather  than  force  of  conception,  simple 
and  fertile;  which  acts  simultaneously  as  if  by  pro- 
cess of  crystallisation  around  several  centres  in  brains 
that  are  naturally  dramatic;  presence  of  mind  in  the 
smallest  details;  remarkable  skill  in  winding  only  one 
thread  at  a  time;  skill  also  in  pruning  and  cutting 
down  rather  than  power  to  be  concise;  ingenious 
knowledge  of  how  to  introduce  and  how  to  dismiss 
his  personages;  sometimes  a  crucial  situation  eluded, 
either  by  a  magniloquent  speech  or  by  the  necessary 
absence  of  an  embarrassing  witness;  in  the  characters 
nothing  divergent  or  eccentric;  all  inconvenient  acces- 
sory   parts    and    antecedents    suppressed;     nothing, 


302  IRacinc. 

however,  too  bare  or  too  monotonous,  but  only  two 
or  three  harmonising  tints  on  a  simple  background; 
then,  in  the  midst  of  all  this,  passion  that  we  have 
not  seen  born,  the  flood  of  which  comes  swelling  on, 
softly  foaming,  and  bearing  you  away,  as  it  were, 
upon  the  whitened  current  of  a  beauteous  river:  that 
is  Racine's  drama.  And  if  we  come  down  to  his 
style  and  to  the  harmony  of  his  versification,  we  shall 
follow  beauties  of  the  same  order,  restrained  within 
the  same  limits;  variations  of  melodious  tones,  no 
doubt,  but  all  within  the  scale  of  a  single  octave. 

A  few  remarks  on  Brttanniats  will  state  my  thought 
precisely,  and  justify  it,  if,  given  in  such  general 
terms,  it  may  seem  bold.  The  topic  of  the  drama  is 
Nero's  crime,  the  one  by  which  he  first  escapes  the 
authority  of  his  mother  and  his  governors.  In  Taci- 
tus, Britannicus  is  shown  to  be  a  young  lad  fourteen 
or  fifteen  years  of  age,  gentle,  intelligent,  and  sad. 
One  day,  in  the  midst  of  a  feast,  Nero,  who  is  drunk, 
compels  him  to  sing  in  order  to  make  him  ridiculous. 
Britannicus  sings  a  song  in  which  he  makes  allusion 
to  his  own  precarious  fate,  and  to  the  patrimony  of 
which  he  has  been  defrauded;  instead  of  laughing 
and  ridiculing  him,  the  guests,  much  affected  and  less 
dissimulating  than  usual  because  they  were  drunk, 
compassionated  him  loudly.  As  for  Nero,  though 
still  pure  of  shedding  blood,  his  natural  ferocity  has 
long  been  muttering  in  his  soul  and  watching  for  an 
occasion  to  break  loose.      He  tries  slow  poison  on 


IRactne.  303 

Britannicus.  Debauchery  gets  the  better  of  him ;  he 
neglects  his  wife  Octavia  for  the  courtesan  Actea. 
Seneca  lends  his  ministry  to  this  shameful  intrigue. 
Agrippina  is  at  first  shocked,  but  she  ends  by  em- 
bracing her  son  and  lending  him  her  house  for  the 
rendezvous.  Agrippina,  mother,  granddaughter,  sis- 
ter, niece,  and  widow  of  emperors,  a  murderess,  in- 
cestuous, and  a  prostitute,  has  no  other  fear  than  to 
see  her  son  escape  her  with  the  imperial  power. 

Such  is  the  mental  situation  of  the  personages  at 
the  moment  when  Racine  begins  his  play.  What 
does  he  do  ?  He  quotes  in  his  preface  the  savage 
words  of  Tacitus  on  Agrippina:  Ouce,  cunctis  malce 
dominationis  cupidinihus  flagrans,  habebatin  partibus 
Pallantem,  and  adds:  "I  merely  quote  this  one  sen- 
tence on  Agrippina,  for  there  are  too  many  things 
to  say  of  her.  It  is  she  whom  I  have  taken  the  most 
pains  to  express  properly,  and  my  tragedy  is  not  less 
the  downfall  of  Agrippina  than  the  death  of  Britan- 
nicus." But  in  spite  of  this  stated  intention  of  the 
author,  the  character  of  Agrippina  is  inadequately  ex- 
pressed; as  an  interest  had  to  be  created  in  her  down- 
fall, her  most  odious  vices  are  thrown  into  the  shade; 
she  becomes  a  personage  of  little  real  presence,  vague, 
unexplained,  a  sort  of  tender  and  jealous  mother; 
there  is  no  question  of  her  adulteries  and  her  murders 
beyond  an  allusion  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  have 
read  her  history  in  Tacitus.  In  place  of  Actea  we 
have  the   romantic  Junia.     Nero  in  love  is  nothing 


304  IRacine, 

more  than  the  impassioned  rival  of  Britannicus,  and 
the  hideous  aspects  of  the  tiger  disappear,  or  are 
delicately  touched  when  they  must  be  encountered. 
What  shall  be  said  of  the  denouement  ?  of  Junia  taking 
refuge  with  the  Vestals,  and  placed  under  the  pro- 
tection of  the  people  ? — as  if  the  people  protected  any 
one  under  Nero!  But  what,  above  all,  we  have  a 
right  to  blame  in  Racine,  is  the  suppression  of  the 
scene  at  the  feast.  Britannicus  is  seated  at  the  table; 
wine  is  poured  out  for  him;  one  of  his  servants  tastes 
the  beverage,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  day,  so 
necessary  was  it  to  guard  against  crime.  But  Nero 
has  foreseen  all;  the  wine  is  too  hot,  cold  water  must 
be  added,  and  it  is  that  cold  water  which  must  be 
poisoned.  The  effect  is  sudden;  the  poison  kills  at 
once;  Locuste  was  charged  to  prepare  it  under  pain 
of  death.  Whether  it  were  disdain  for  these  circum- 
stances, or  the  difficulty  of  expressing  them  in  verse, 
Racine  evades  them;  he  confines  himself  to  presenting 
the  moral  effect  of  the  poisoning  on  the  spectators,  and 
in  that  he  succeeds.  But  it  must  be  owned  that  even  on 
that  point  befalls  below  the  incisivebrevity,the  splendid 
conciseness  of  Tacitus.  Too  often,  when  he  translates 
Tacitus,  as  he  translated  the  Bible,  Racine  opens  a  path 
for  himself  between  the  extreme  qualities  of  the 
originals  and  carefully  keeps  to  the  middle  of  the  road, 
never  approaching  the  sides  where  the  precipice  lies. 
Britannicus,  Phedre,  Athalie,  Roman,  Greek,  and 
Biblical  tragedy,  those  are  the  three  great  dramatic 


IRacine.  305 

claims  of  Racine,  below  which  all  his  other  master- 
pieces range  themselves.  I  have  already  expressed 
my  admiration  for  Phedre,  and  yet  one  cannot  conceal 
from  one's  self  that  the  play  is  even  less  Greek  in 
manners  and  morals  than  Britanniciis  is  Roman. 
Hippolytus,  the  lover,  resembles  Hippolytus,  the 
hunter,  the  favourite  of  Diana,  even  less  than  Nero, 
the  lover,  resembles  the  Nero  of  Tacitus.  Phedre, 
queen-mother  and  regent  for  her  son,  on  the  supposed 
death  of  her  husband  amply  counterbalances  Junia, 
protected  by  the  people  and  consigned  to  the  Vestals. 
Euripides  himself  leaves  much  to  be  desired  as  to 
truth;  he  has  lost  the  higher  meaning  of  the  mytho- 
logical traditions  thaty^schylus  and  Sophocles  entered 
into  so  deeply;  but  in  him  we  find,  at  any  rate,  a 
whole  order  of  things  —  landscape,  religion,  rites, 
family  recollections,  all  these  constitute  a  depth  of 
reality  which  fixes  the  mind  and  rests  it.  With  Ra- 
cine all  that  is  not  Phedre  and  her  passion  escapes  and 
disappears.  The  sad  Aricia,  the  Pallantides,  the  di- 
vers adventures  of  Theseus,  leave  scarcely  a  trace  in 
our  memory. 

This  might  lead  us  to  conclude  with  Corneille,  if  we 
dared,  that  Racine  had  a  far  greater  talent  for  poesy  in 
general  than  for  the  drama  in  particular.  Racine  was 
dramatic,  no  doubt,  but  he  was  so  in  a  style  that  was 
little  so.  In  other  times,  in  times  like  ours,  when  the 
proportions  of  the  drama  are  necessarily  so  different 
from    what   they   were   then,  what   would   he   have 


VOL.  II.  —  20. 


3o6  iRacine. 

done?  Would  he  have  attempted  it?  His  genius, 
naturally  meditative  and  placid,  would  it  have 
sufficed  for  that  intensity  of  action  that  our  blasee 
curiosity  demands  ?  for  that  absolute  truth  in 
ethics  and  characters  that  becomes  indispensable 
after  a  period  of  mighty  revolution  ?  for  that  higher 
philosophy  that  gives  to  all  things  a  meaning,  that 
makes  action  something  else  than  mere  imbroglio, 
and  historical  colour  something  better  than  white- 
wash ?  Had  he  the  force  and  the  character  to  lead  all 
these  parts  of  the  work  abreast;  to  maintain  them  in 
presence  and  in  harmony,  to  blend,  to  link  them  into 
an  indissoluble  and  living  form,  to  fuse  them  one  into 
the  other  in  the  fire  of  passion  ?  Would  he  not  have 
found  it  more  simple,  more  conformable  to  his  nature, 
to  withdraw  passion  from  the  midst  of  these  intrica- 
cies in  which  it  might  be  lost  as  if  poured  into  sand  ? 
to  keep  it  within  his  own  channel  and  follow  singly 
the  harmonious  course  of  grand  and  noble  elegy,  of 
which  Esther  and  Berenice  are  the  limpid  and  trans- 
parent reservoirs  ?  Those  are  delicate  questions,  to 
which  we  can  only  reply  by  conjectures.  I  have 
hazarded  mine,  in  which  there  is  nothing  irreverent 
towards  the  genius  of  Racine.  Is  it  irreverent  to  de- 
clare that  we  prefer  in  him  pure  poesy  to  drama,  and 
that  we  are  tempted  to  ally  him  to  the  race  of  lyric 
geniuses,  of  religious  and  elegiac  singers,  whose  mis- 
sion here  below  is  to  celebrate  Love  —  love  as  Dante 
and  Plato  saw  it  ? 


IRacine.  307 

The  life  of  retirement,  of  household  cares,  and 
study,  which  Racine  led  during  the  twelve  years  of 
his  fullest  maturity,  seem  to  confirm  these  conject- 
ures. Corneille  also  tried  for  some  years  to  renounce 
the  theatre;  but,  though  already  in  declining  years,  he 
could  not  continue  the  attempt  and  soon  returned  to 
the  arena.  Nothing  of  this  impatience  or  this  diffi- 
culty of  controlling  himself  appears  to  have  troubled 
the  long  silence  of  Racine.  His  affections  went  else- 
where; he  thought  of  Port-Royal,  then  so  persecuted, 
and  took  delightful  pleasure  in  memories  of  his  child- 
hood: 

"  There  was  no  religious  house  at  that  time,"  he  says,  "  in  better 
odour  than  Port-Royal .  All  that  could  be  seen  of  it  from  without  in- 
spired piety;  people  admired  the  grave  and  touching  manner  in  which 
the  praises  of  God  were  sung  there,  the  simplicity,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  propriety  of  their  church,  the  modesty  of  the  servants,  the 
solitude  of  the  parlour,  the  little  eagerness  shown  by  the  nuns  to  enter 
into  conversation,  their  lack  of  curiosity  about  the  things  of  the  world, 
and  even  about  the  affairs  of  their  neighbours;  in  a  word,  an  entire  in- 
difference to  all  that  did  not  concern  God.  But  how  much  more  did 
persons  who  knew  the  interior  of  the  monastery  find  subjects  of  edifi- 
cation! What  peace!  what  silence!  what  charity!  what  love  for 
poverty  and  for  deprivation!  Toil  without  intermission,  continual 
pra3'er,  no  ambition  except  for  the  lowest  and  humblest  employments; 
no  impatience  in  the  sisters;  no  whims  in  the  mothers;  obedience 
always  prompt,  and  commands  always  reasonable." 

Port-Royal  had  all  of  Racine's  soul;  thence  he  drew 
calmness;  in  behalf  of  it  he  offered  prayers;  he  was 
filled  with  the  moanings  of  that  afflicted  house  when 
for  the  prosperous  house  of  Saint-Cyr  he  wrote  the 
touching  melodies  of  the  chorus  of  Esther.    During 


3o8  IRadne. 

these  years  of  his  retirement  he  wrote  the  History  of 
Port-Royal,  as  well  as  that  of  the  king's  campaigns, 
delivered  two  or  three  discourses  before  the  Academy, 
and  translated  certain  hymns  of  the  Church.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  drew  him  from  his  literary  inaction,  about 
the  year  1688,  by  asking  him  for  a  play  for  Saint-Cyr. 
He  woke  with  a  start,  at  forty-eight  years  of  age,  to  a 
new  and  wonderful  career,  taken  in  two  steps:  Es- 
ther for  his  first  attempt,  Athalie  for  his  masterpiece. 
Those  two  works,  so  sudden,  so  unexpected,  so  dif- 
ferent to  the  others,  do  they  not  confute  our  opinion 
of  Racine,  and  escape  all  the  general  criticisms  I  have 
ventured  to  make  upon  his  work  } 

Racine  on  Hebrew  subjects  is  far  otherwise  at  ease 
than  on  Greek  and  Roman  subjects.  Nurtured  from 
childhood  on  sacred  books,  sharing  the  beliefs  of  the 
people  of  God,  he  keeps  strictly  to  the  Scripture  nar- 
rative; he  does  not  think  himself  obliged  to  mingle 
the  authority  of  Aristotle  in  the  action  of  the  play, 
nor,  above  all,  to  place  at  the  heart  of  his  drama  an 
amorous  intrigue  (and  love  is  of  all  human  things  the 
one  which,  resting  on  an  eternal  basis,  varies  most  in 
its  forms  according  to  the  ages,  and  consequently 
leads  the  poet  more  surely  into  error).  Nevertheless, 
in  spite  of  the  relationship  of  religions,  and  the  com- 
munion of  certain  beliefs,  there  is  in  Judaism  an  ele- 
ment apart,  inward,  primitive,  oriental,  which  it  is 
important  to  grasp  and  put  forward  prominently, 
under   pain  of  being   tame   and    unfaithful;  and  this 


IRactnc.  309 

fundamental  element,  so  well  understood  by  Bossuet 
in  his  Politique  Sacree,  by  M.  de  Maistre  in  all  his 
writings,  and  by  the  English  painter,  Martin,  in  his 
art,  was  not  accessible  to  the  sweet  and  tender  poet 
who  saw  the  Old  Testament  solely  through  the  New, 
and  had  no  other  guide  to  Samuel  than  Saint  Paul. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  architecture  of  Athalie;  with 
the  Hebrews  all  was  figurative,  symbolical;  the  im- 
portance of  forms  was  part  of  the  spirit  of  the  law. 
Vainly  do  I  look  in  Racine  for  that  temple  wondrously 
built  by  Solomon,  in  marble,  in  cedar,  overlaid  with 
pure  gold,  the  walls  gleaming  with  golden  cherubim 
and  palm-trees.  I  am  in  the  vestibule,  but  I  see  not 
the  two  famous  columns  of  bronze,  eighteen  cubits 
high,  one  named  Jachin,  the  other  Boaz;  nor  the  sea 
of  brass,  nor  the  brazen  oxen,  nor  the  lions;  neither 
can  I  imagine  within  the  tabernacle  the  cherubim  of 
olive-wood,  ten  cubits  high,  their  wings  stretched 
out  and  touching  one  another  until  they  encircled  the 
arch  of  the  dome.  The  scene  in  Racine  takes  place 
under  a  Greek  peristyle,  rather  bare,  and  I  am  much 
less  disposed  to  accept  the  "sacrifice  of  blood"  and 
"immolation  by  the  sacred  knife"  than  if  the  poet 
had  taken  me  to  the  colossal  temple,  where  King 
Solomon  offered  unto  Jehovah,  for  a  peace-offering, 
two-and-twenty  thousand  oxen  and  one  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  sheep.  Analogous  criticism  may  be 
made  upon  the  characters  and  speeches  of  the  person- 
ages. 


3IO  TRaciue. 

In  short,  Athalie  is  an  imposing  work  as  a  whole, 
and  in  many  parts  magnificent,  but  not  so  complete 
nor  so  unapproachable  as  many  have  chosen  to  con- 
sider it.  In  it  Racine  does  not  penetrate  into  the 
very  essence  of  Hebraic  oriental  poesy;  he  steps  cau- 
tiously between  its  naive  sublimity  on  the  one  hand, 
and  its  naive  grace  on  the  other,  carefully  denying 
himself  both. 

Shall  1  own  it.^  Esther,  with  its  charming  gentle- 
ness and  its  lovely  pictures,  less  dramatic  than 
Athalie,  and  with  lower  aims,  seems  to  me  more 
complete  in  itself  and  leaving  nothing  to  be  desired. 
It  is  true  that  this  graceful  Bible  episode  is  flanked  by 
two  strange  events,  about  which  Racine  says  not  a 
single  word:  1  mean  the  sumptuous  feast  of  Ahas- 
uerus,  that  lasted  one  hundred  and  eighty  days,  and 
the  massacre  of  their  enemies  by  the  Jews,  that  lasted 
two  whole  days,  at  the  formal  request  of  the  Jewess 
Esther.  With  that  exception,  and  perhaps  by  reason 
of  that  omission,  this  delightful  poem,  so  perfect  as  a 
whole,  so  filled  with  chastity,  with  sighs,  with  re- 
ligious unction,  seems  to  me  the  most  natural  fruit 
that  Racine's  genius  has  borne.  It  is  the  purest  effu- 
sion, the  most  winning  plaint  of  his  tender  soul, 
which  could  not  be  present  where  a  nun  took  the  veil 
without  being  melted  to  tears  —  an  incident  of  which 
Mme.  de  Maintenon  wrote:  "Racine,  who  likes  to 
weep,  is  coming  to  the  profession  of  Sister  Lalie." 

About  this  time,   he  composed  for  Saint-Cyr  four 


TRacine.  311 

spiritual  canticles,  which  should  be  numbered  among 
his  finest  works.  Two  are  after  Saint  Paul,  whom 
Racine  treats  as  he  has  already  treated  Tacitus  and  the 
Bible;  that  is  to  say,  by  encircling  him  with  suavity 
and  harmony,  but  sometimes  enfeebling  him.  It  is 
to  be  regretted  that  he  did  not  carry  this  species  of 
religious  composition  farther,  and  that  in  the  eight 
years  that  followed  Athalie  he  did  not  cast  forth  with 
originality  some  of  the  personal,  tender,  passionate, 
fervent  sentiments  that  lay  hidden  in  his  breast.  Cer- 
tain passages  in  his  letters  to  his  eldest  son,  then  at- 
tached to  the  embassy  in  Holland,  make  us  conscious 
of  an  inward  and  deep-lying  poesy  which  he  has  no- 
where communicated,  which  he  restrained  within 
himself  for  long  years;  inward  delights  incessantly 
ready  to  overflow,  but  which  he  never  poured  out 
except  in  prayer  at  the  feet  of  God,  and  with  tears 
that  filled  his  eyes. 

The  poesy  of  those  days,  v/hich  formed  a  part  of 
literature,  was  so  distinct  from  life,  that  the  idea  of 
ever  joining  them  came  to  no  one;  and  once  devoted 
to  domestic  cares,  to  fatherly  affection,  and  the  duties 
of  a  parishioner,  a  man  had  raised  an  insurmountable 
wall  between  the  Muses  and  himself.  Nevertheless, 
as  no  deep  sentiment  is  ever  sterile  within  us,  this 
poesy,  repressed  and  without  issue,  becomes  a  sweet 
savour,  secret,  yet  mingling  in  every  action,  in  the 
lightest  words,  exhaling  itself  by  ways  unknown,  and 
communicating  a  good  fragrance  of  worth  and  virtue. 


312  IRacine. 

This  was  the  case  with  Racine;  it  is  the  effect  made 
upon  us  to-day  as  we  read  his  letters  to  his  son,  al- 
ready a  man  launched  upon  the  world;  simple,  pater- 
nal letters,  written  by  the  family  hearth,  beside  the 
mother,  and  among  the  six  other  children;  every  line 
with  the  impress  of  grave  tenderness,  austere  sweet- 
ness; letters  in  which  reproofs  as  to  style,  advice  to 
avoid  the  "repetition  of  words,"  and  the  "locutions 
of  the  '  Gazette  of  Holland,'  "  are  naively  mingled  with 
precepts  for  conduct  and  Christian  warnings: 

"  You  have  some  reason  to  attribute  the  success  of  your  voyage  in 
such  bad  weather  to  the  prayers  that  have  been  offered  for  you.  I 
count  mine  as  nothing;  but  your  mother  and  your  little  sister  prayed 
God  every  day  to  preserve  you  from  accidents;  and  they  did  the  same 
at  Port-Royal.  .  .  .  M.  de  Torcy  informs  me  that  you  are  in  the 
Gazette  de  Hollande ;  had  1  known  it,  I  should  have  bought  the  pa- 
per to  read  it  to  your  little  sisters,  who  would  think  you  had  become 
a  man  of  consequence." 

He  writes  that  Mme.  Racine  is  always  thinking  of 
her  eldest  son,  and  that  when  they  have  anything  "a 
little  good  for  dinner"  she  cannot  keep  from  saying: 
"  Racine  would  have  liked  to  eat  that."  A  friend,  re- 
turning from  Holland,  brought  news  to  the  family  of 
the  cherished  son ;  they  overwhelmed  him  with  ques- 
tions, and  his  answers  were  all  satisfactory:  "But  1 
did  not  dare,"  writes  the  excellent  father,  "to  ask  him 
if  you  thought  a  little  of  the  good  God;  I  was  so 
afraid  the  answer  might  not  be  such  as  I  could 
wish." 

The  most  important  domestic  event  of  Racine's  last 


TRacine.  s^s 

years  was  the  taking  of  the  veil  at  Melun  of  his  young- 
est daughter,  then  eighteen  years  of  age.  He  tells  his 
son  of  the  ceremony  and  relates  the  details  to  his  old 
aunt,  still  living  at  Port-Royal,  of  which  she  was 
abbess.  He  never  ceased  to  sob  during  the  service; 
from  that  breaking  heart,  treasures  of  love,  inexpres- 
sible emotions  flowed  forth  in  those  tears;  it  was  like 
the  oil  poured  out  from  Mary's  vase.  Fenelon  wrote 
to  him  to  console  him.  With  this  extreme  giving  way 
to  emotion,  this  keen  sensibility,  growing  more  sensi- 
tive daily,  we  can  understand  the  fatal  effect  on  Racine 
of  Louis  XlV's  speech,  and  of  that  last  blow  which 
killed  him.  But  he  was  already,  and  had  been  for 
a  long  time  ill — ill  of  the  ill  of  poesy;  towards  the 
end,  this  inward  and  hidden  predisposition  degene- 
rated into  a  sort  of  dropsy,  which  delivered  him  over 
without  strength  or  resource  to  the  slightest  shock. 

He  died  in  1699  in  his  sixtieth  year,  reverenced  and 
mourned  by  all,  crowned  by  fame,  but  leaving,  it 
must  be  said,  a  literary  posterity  that  was  not  virile, 
well-intentioned  rather  than  capable:  such  as  Rollin 
and  Olivet  in  criticism,  Duche  and  Campistron  in 
drama,  Jean  Baptiste  and  the  Racine  sons  in  ode  and 
poem.  From  his  own  time  until  ours,  and  through  all 
variations  of  taste,  Racine's  renown  continues,  with- 
out attack  and  constantly  receiving  universal  homage, 
fundamentally  just,  and  deserved  as  homage,  though 
often  unintelligent  in  its  motives.  Critics  of  little 
compass  have  abused  the  right  of  citing  him  as  a 


314  IRacine. 

model;  they  have  too  often  proposed  for  imitation  his 
most  inferior  qualities;  but,  for  whoso  comprehends 
him  truly,  there  is  enough,  in  his  work  and  in  his  life, 
to  make  him  for  ever  admired  as  a  great  poet  and 
cherished  as  a  heart-friend. 


XI. 

flDa^amc  be  Caplua^ 


315 


XI. 

/IDaC)ame  ^e  Cai^lus* 

IT  has  often  happened  to  me  to  speak  of  that  happy 
epoch  of  our  language  and  taste  that,  in  France, 
corresponds  with  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  cent- 
ury and  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth,  when,  after 
the  production  of  our  greatest  works,  and  in  the  close 
neighbourhood  of  the  best  as  well  as  the  most  charm- 
ing minds,  delicacy  and  refinement  were  extreme,  and 
corruption  (meaning  pretension,  affectation)  had  not 
yet  come.  To-day,  I  desire  to  show  that  perfect  mo- 
ment in  a  pleasing  and  somewhat  distinct  person, 
who  paints  it  for  us  with  vivacity  and  grace,  and  who 
paints  nothing  else.  It  would  be  easy  to  find  greater 
examples  than  Mme.  de  Caylus,  who  wrote  with  diffi- 
culty, and  only  accidentally,  as  it  were;  but  such  ex- 
amples would  prove  other  things,  more  things  than  I 
have  in  view,  and  the  delicacy  of  which  I  wish  to  give 
an  idea  is  in  them  complicated,  in  a  measure,  by  the 
talent  of  the  writer.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  in  pausing 
a  moment  with  this  woman  of  a  pen  so  delicate  and 
light,  we  are    not   distracted   from   the    point    1   am 

317 


3i8  /iDaDame  &e  Callus. 

especially  anxious  to  indicate,  a  quality  which  those 
who  knew  her  best  designated,  when  speaking  of 
her,  as  "pure  urbanity." 

Mme.  de  Caylus  was  the  niece  of  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon,  niece  in  the  Bretagne  way.  The  great  d'Au- 
bigne  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the  warrior-writer, 
the  Calvinist-frondeur,  the  bold  and  caustic  companion 
of  Henri  IV,  had  a  son  and  two  daughters;  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  was  the  daughter  of  the  son;  Mme.  de 
Caylus  was  the  granddaughter  of  one  of  the  daugh- 
ters. The  father  of  Mme.  de  Caylus,  the  Marquis  de 
Villette,  a  distinguished  naval  officer  who  left  Memoirs, 
seems  to  have  had  something  of  her  grandfather  about 
him  in  courage  and  intellect.  Mme.  de  Caylus  herself 
was  not  without  likeness  to  her  great  forefather;  be- 
neath her  womanly  grace  and  her  angelic  air  she  has 
a  sharp,  keen,  biting  wit.  She  is  a  female  Antoine 
Hamilton.  At  first  she  seems  occupied  solely  with 
pleasures,  amusements,  and  the  trifles  of  society;  but 
do  not  for  a  moment  suppose  that  you  are  dealing  with 
a  weak  or  silly  woman.  Her  mind  is  clear  and  firm, 
observing  and  sensible;  it  is,  like  that  of  Mme.  de 
Maintenon,  solid;  but  in  Mme.  de  Caylus  solidity  lies 
hidden  by  a  flower.  Her  depth,  however,  will  be 
found  by  whoso  seeks  it;  and,  after  living  with  her 
for  a  short  time,  we  say  to  ourselves  that  there  is 
nothing,  after  all,  like  a  strong  race  when  grace  comes 
in  to  crown  it. 

Born  in  1673,  in  Poitou,  Mile.  Marguerite  de  Villette- 


MARQUISE  DE  CAYLUS. 

After  the  painting  by  G.  Staal. 


/TOa^ame  C>e  Caplus.  319 

Murray  was  carried  off  from  her  family,  when  seven 
years  of  age,  by  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  The  king  was 
then  converting,  nolentes  volentes,  the  Huguenots  of 
his  kingdom,  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  following  his 
example,  made  it  her  duty  to  convert  her  own  family. 
So  the  young  de  Murray  was  carried  off  while  her 
father  was  at  sea.  An  aunt,  the  father's  sister,  lent  a 
helping  hand  to  this  abduction  which  had  so  good 
a  purpose.  We  ought  to  hear  Mme.  de  Caylus  relate 
this  early  adventure: 

"  My  mother  had  hardly  started  for  Niort  before  my  aunt,  who  was 
used  to  changing  religion,  and  had  just  been  converted  for  the  second 
or  third  time,  started  too,  and  took  me  with  her  to  Paris." 

On  the  way  they  encounter  other  young  girls, 
older  in  years,  whom  Mme.  de  Maintenon  was  claim- 
ing for  conversion.  These  young  people,  determined 
to  resist,  were  as  much  astonished  as  they  were 
grieved  to  see  the  young  de  Murray  carried  off  with- 
out defence : 

"  As  for  me,"  she  says,  "  content  to  go  wherever  they  took  me,  I 
was  neither "  (grieved  or  astonished).  .  .  .  "  We  arrived  together 
in  Paris,  where  Mme.  de  Maintenon  came  at  once  to  fetch  me,  and 
took  me  alone  to  Saint-Germain.  At  first  I  wept  a  great  deal;  but 
the  next  day  I  thought  the  King's  mass  so  beautiful  that  1  consented 
to  become  a  Catholic,  on  condition  that  1  should  hear  it  every  day, 
and  that  I  should  be  guaranteed  against  whipping.  That  was  all  the 
discussion  they  employed,  and  the  sole  abjuration  that  1  made." 

From  the  tone  in  which  Mme.  de  Caylus  relates 
things  held  to  be  so  important,  we  are  led  to  ask  what 


320  /iDa^ame  ^c  Caplus» 

she  really  thought  of  them.  Did  she  know,  herself? 
Like  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  her  natural  wit  and  liveliness 
carries  her  away;  the  facts  seem  to  her  amusing,  and 
she  relates  them  gaily. 

Mme.  de  Maintenon  brought  her  up,  and  did  it  as 
she  knew  how  to  do  it;  that  is  to  say,  with  taste,  with 
preciseness,  and  in  perfection.  All  her  careless  and 
rather  volatile  graces,  which  might  otherwise  have 
run  the  risk  of  emancipating  themselves  too  early  and 
of  playing  at  large,  were  regulated  and  brought  to 
good  effect,  appearing  at  the  right  time.  They  mar- 
ried her  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  and  rather  badly.  It 
was  one  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon's  assumed  humilities 
to  marry  this  charming  niece,  whom  the  greatest 
matches  were  seeking,  in  a  mediocre  way.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  was  full  of  such  refinements  of  modesty 
and  disinterestedness  in  view  of  distinction  and  glory; 
in  this  case  the  child  paid  the  cost  of  the  aunt's  virtue. 
The  husband  given  to  her,  M.  de  Caylus,  very  or- 
dinary as  to  fortune,  was  in  other  respects  most  un- 
worthy of  her.  When  he  died  in  Flanders,  in  1704, 
"his  death  gave  pleasure  to  all  his  family,  he  was 
blas^,  stupefied  for  many  years  with  wine  and 
brandy,"  and  they  kept  him  on  the  frontier  in  win- 
ter as  well  as  summer,  expressly  forbidding  him  to 
approach  either  his  wife  or  the  Court.  It  was  to  such 
a  man,  with  such  warnings,  that  Mme.  de  Maintenon, 
from  principle,  and  in  preference  to  all  others,  thought 
it  right  to  give  a  young  girl  whom  she  had  brought 


/TOaDame  De  Callus.  321 

up    with   the   utmost   care,    and   of  whom   all   eye- 
witnesses give  us  enchanting  descriptions: 

"Never,"  cries  Saint-Simon,  "was  there  a  face  so  spiritual,  so 
touching,  so  speaking;  never  a  freshness  like  hers,  never  so  many 
graces  or  more  intelligence,  never  so  much  gaiety  and  liveliness,  never 
a  creature  more  bewitching." 

And  the  Abbe  de  Choisy,  who  knew  her  at  that 
time  and  later,  and  who  enjoyed  her  at  all  ages,  says: 

"  Laughter  and  playfulness  shone  in  rivalry  round  her;  her  mind 
was  still  more  lovable  than  her  face;  one  had  no  time  to  breathe  or  be 
dull  when  she  was  near.  All  the  Champmesles  in  the  world  never  had 
those  ravishing  tones  of  voice  which  she  gave  out  in  declaiming,  and 
if  her  natural  gaiety  had  allowed  her  to  check  certain  little  coquettish 
airs,  that  all  her  innocence  could  not  justify,  she  would  have  been  a 
perfect  person." 

Apropos  of  this  comparison  with  Mile.  Champmesle, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  Mme.  de  Caylus  played 
Esther  at  Saint-Cyr,  and  played  the  part  better,  it  was 
said,  than  the  famous  actress  would  have  done.  She 
was  not  educated  at  Saint-Cyr;  she  came  too  soon  for 
that,  but  she  witnessed  its  beginnings;  and  one  day, 
when  Racine  recited  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon  the  scenes 
in  Esther,  which  he  was  composing  for  that  establish- 
ment, Mme.  de  Caylus  began  to  declaim  them  so  well, 
and  in  so  touching  a  voice,  that  Racine  entreated  Mme. 
de  Maintenon  to  let  her  niece  act  the  part.  It  was  for 
her  that  he  composed  the  prologue  of  La  Piete,  in 
which  she  made  her  first  appearance.  But  Mme.  de 
Caylus,  once  launched,  did  not  confine  herself  to  the 
prologue,  and  she  played  successively  all  personages, 


VOL.   II. 21. 


322  /B^a^ame  ^e  Callus. 

but  especially  Esther.  She  had  but  one  defect,  and 
that  was  to  act  too  well  and  touch  the  heart  too  deeply 
by  certain  accents.  "They  continue  to  play  Esther/' 
writes  Mme.  de  Sevigne  to  her  daughter  (1689). 
"  Mme.  de  Caylus,  who  was  their  Champmesle,  plays 
no  longer;  she  did  too  well,  she  was  too  touching; 
they  want  only  pure  simplicity  for  those  little  inno- 
cent souls."  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  considered  to  have 
been  the  last  person,  the  last  actress,  who  preserved 
the  pure  declamation  of  Racine,  the  degree  of  cadence 
and  song  that  suited  those  melodious  verses,  written 
expressly  for  the  voices  of  a  Caylus  or  a  La  Valliere. 

My  readers  will  now  comprehend  what  I  meant 
when  I  spoke  of  the  perfection  of  culture  and  taste  in 
a  young  woman  who,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  had  seen 
the  birth  of  Esther,  breathed  its  first  fragrance,  and 
entered  so  fully  into  its  spirit  that  she  seemed,  by  the 
emotion  of  her  voice,  to  add  something  to  it. 

This  emotion,  with  all  that  it  promised  of  senti- 
ments just  ready  to  blossom  forth,  was  not  confined 
to  the  voice  of  Mme.  de  Caylus.  I  am  not  narrating 
her  life,  and  she  herself  in  her  Souvenirs  scarcely 
speaks  of  what  relates  to  herself.  But  Saint-Simon 
informs  us  about  her,  as  he  does  about  so  many 
others,  in  a  way  that  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired. 
Through  her  satirical  sallies,  her  vivacities  of  heart 
and  mind,  and  her  liaison  with  the  Due  de  Villeroy, 
Mme.  de  Caylus  earned  an  exile  from  Court  when 
nineteen  years  of  age.    She  was  exiled  once,  and  pos- 


/IDabame  ^e  Callus,  323 

sibly  twice;  at  any  rate,  she  was  not  less  than  thirteen 
or  fourteen  years  away  from  Court,  under  a  species  of 
punishment.  She  consoled  herself  at  first  by  living  in 
Paris  in  the  society  of  persons  of  intellect;  it  was  there 
that  she  knew  La  Fare,  who  wrote  for  her  some  of 
his  prettiest  verses.  She  took  a  house  and  received 
her  friends. 

But  after  a  while,  whether  for  emiui  or  caprice,  or 
in  remembrance  of  Esther,  she  began  to  throw  herself 
on  the  side  of  devotion,  and  a  devotion  that  was  not 
considered  the  proper  thing.  She  took  for  her  con- 
fessor Pere  de  La  Tour,  a  man  of  much  intellect,  with- 
out compliance,  and  best  known  as  General  of  the 
Congregation  of  the  Oratory.  But  this  priest  was 
suspected  of  Jansenism,  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon, 
with  her  strict,  plain  sense,  always  looking  for  what- 
ever brought  useful  respect,  would  have  preferred  to 
see  her  niece  without  a  confessor  than  with  one  who 
was  looked  upon  with  suspicion  at  Court.  She  did  so 
much  in  the  matter  that,  insensibly,  the  young  widow 
abandoned  her  confessor  and  austerity,  and  resumed 
her  worldly  habits.  She  reappeared  at  Versailles,  at 
the  king's  supper,  in  February,  1707,  "beautiful  as  an 
angel."  It  was  more  than  thirteen  years  since  she 
had  seen  the  king.  But  by  her  wit,  her  charm,  and 
skill  she  repaired  all,  and  her  long  eclipse  was  as  if  it 
had  never  been.  She  softened  and  reconquered  her 
aunt,  became  once  more  necessary  to  her,  was  soon  a 
part  of  all  intimacies  and  of  all  private  coteries,  and  her 


324  /fDaOame  t)e  Caplus. 

apparent  favour  was  complete  enough  to  obtain  for 
her  certain  malignant  satirical  couplets,  which  curious 
persons  may  seek  in  the  Recueil  of  Maurepas. 

Mme.  de  Caylus  remained  at  Versailles  until  the 
death  of  Louis  XIV;  put  aside  from  that  time  as 
a  person  of  the  "old  Court,"  she  returned  to  live  in 
Paris,  in  a  little  house  within  the  gardens  of  the  Lux- 
embourg. There  she  lived,  in  semi-retirement  from 
the  world,  among  her  friends  and  the  Due  de  Villeroy 
to  the  end,  often  having  with  her  her  son,  the  Comte 
de  Caylus,  an  original  and  a  philosopher,  giving  sup- 
pers to  people  in  society  and  to  learned  men,  mingling 
devotion,  the  ways  of  the  world,  liberty  of  mind,  and 
the  graces  of  society  in  the  charming  and  rather  con- 
fused measure  of  the  preceding  century.  She  died  in 
April,  1729,  aged  fifty-six  years. 

The  portraits  that  we  have  of  her  in  her  youth 
answer  well  to  the  idea  given  of  her  beauty  by  Saint- 
Simon,  the  Abbe  de  Choisy,  and  Mme.  de  Coulanges. 
Whether  in  morning  robes.  Court  dress,  or  winter 
garments,  she  appears  in  each  delicate,  slender,  tall, 
noble,  elegant,  and  pretty;  her  tall  figure  gave  her 
the  grand  air;  her  face  was  a  little  round,  an  angel 
face,  in  which  sweetness  was  allied  to  mischief,  with 
dainty  lips  on  which  raillery  played  easily,  beautiful 
eyes  whence  sparkled  charm  and  intelligence;  grace 
and  distinction  over  all.  What  more  shall  1  say  ? 
Such  a  face  had  but  to  choose,  it  could  be,  at  will, 
either  Esther  or  Celimene. 


/lOaDame  De  Callus.  325 

As  for  direct  testimony  upon  her  intellect,  we  find 
it  in  the  volume  of  her  Correspondence  with  Mme. 
de  Maintenon  and  in  her  Souvemrs.  This  little  book 
of  Souvenirs,  published  in  1770  (forty  years  after  her 
death),  with  a  preface  by  Voltaire,  seems  nothing  to 
us  to-day,  because  all  its  anecdotes  have  long  passed 
into  circulation,  and  we  know  them  by  heart  without 
remembering  from  whom  we  obtained  them;  but, 
all  the  same,  it  was  she  who  first  told  them  de- 
lightfully. The  book  is  in  the  style  of  the  Memoirs 
of  Queen  Marguerite,  and  of  some  of  the  historical 
writings  of  Mme.  de  La  Fayette:  it  is  "an  afternoon's 
work."  No  effort  is  visible;  "she  never  tries,"  they 
said  of  her.  Her  pen  runs  negligently;  but  those 
negligences  are  precisely  that  which  makes  the  ease 
and  charm  of  her  conversation.  Do  not  ask  her  for 
more  than  a  rapid  series  of  portraits  and  sketches; 
in  those  she  excels.  Her  light  pen  touches  every- 
thing to  the  purpose;  she  takes  from  each  person  the 
dominant  feature  and  seizes  all  it  is  essential  to  show 
in  them.  Mme.  de  Maintenon  is  there  undisguised; 
with  her  good  qualities  but  without  flattery;  we  can 
even  trace,  here  and  there,  beneath  the  praises,  a  tinge 
of  malice.  Louis  XIV  is  painted  by  just  and  neat 
strokes  which  show  him  without  exaggeration,  and 
with  all  his  excellences  in  every-day  life;  we  feel  the 
king,  worthy  of  this  great  epoch  in  which  men 
thought  and  spoke  so  well.  Mme,  de  Montespan, 
who   had   so   much  piquancy  and  a  unique  turn  of 


326  ^a^ame  &e  Caplus. 

humour  and  satire,  imagined  that  she  could  govern 
the  king  for  ever,  because  she  knew  herself  superior 
to  him  in  mind.  Mme.  de  Caylus  disposes  in  two 
words  of  that  pretended  superiority,  which  only  ex- 
isted by  chance,  as  it  were: 

"  The  king  did  not,  perhaps,  know  how  to  talk  as  well  as  she,  though 
he  spoke  perfectly  well.  He  thought  justly,  expressed  himself  nobly, 
and  his  least  prepared  answers  covered  in  few  words  all  that  there  was 
that  was  best  to  say  according  to  times  and  seasons,  things  and  persons. 
He  had,  far  more  than  his  mistress,  the  sort  of  mind  that  gives  advan- 
tage over  others.  Never  in  haste  to  speak,  he  examined,  he  penetrated 
their  characters  and  thoughts;  but,  as  he  was  wise,  and  knew  how 
the  words  of  kings  are  weighed,  he  often  kept  to  himself  that  which 
his  penetration  had  discovered.  If  it  was  a  question  of  discussing  im- 
portant affairs,  the  most  enlightened  and  the  ablest  men  were  aston- 
ished at  his  knowledge,  convinced  that  he  knew  more  than  they,  and 
charmed  by  the  manner  in  which  he  expressed  it.  If  he  frolicked, 
if  he  made  jokes,  if  he  deigned  to  tell  a  story,  it  was  with  infinite  grace, 
and  a  noble  and  elegant  turn  of  manner  and  phrase  that  I  have  never 
known  in  any  one  but  him." 

That  is  how  Louis  XIV  spoke  and  kept  his  rank  as 
king  through  that  epoch  of  intellect.  Without  flat- 
tery, and  considering  only  the  fulness  and  correctness 
of  his  language  in  ordinary  discourse,  he  might  have 
been  one  of  the  leading  Academicians  of  his  kingdom. 

The  observation  of  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  always  direct 
and  prompt;  she  goes  to  the  bottom  of  characters 
without  appearing  to  do  so.  When  it  is  necessary  to 
picture  Mile,  de  Fontanges,  with  her  beauty  and  her 
peculiar  style  of  romantic  silliness,  and  to  make  it  felt 
how,  even  if  she  had  lived,  the  king  could  not  have 
loved  her  long,  she  says  it  in  two  lines: 


/IDat)ame  ^e  Cai^lus.  327 

"  We  accustom  ourselves  to  beauty,  but  we  never  accustom  our- 
selves to  silliness  turning  to  affectation,  especially  when  we  are  at  the 
same  time  with  persons  of  the  mind  and  nature  of  Mme.  de  Monte- 
span,  whom  no  absurdity  escaped,  and  who  knew  so  well  how  to 
make  it  felt  by  others  by  means  of  that  unique  wit  peculiar  to  the 
family  of  the  Mortemarts." 

Yet  this  same  Mile,  de  Fontanges,  the  vain  and  silly 
beauty,  gave  a  lesson  one  day  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon, 
who  exhorted  her,  with  her  stiff  rectitude,  to  cure 
herself  of  a  passion  that  could  not  make  her  happy: 
"You  talk  to  me,"  replied  the  young  woman,  "of 
quitting  a  passion  as  one  would  take  off  a  gown." 
The  girl  without  mind  was  enlightened  for  a  moment 
by  her  heart. 

What  distinguishes,  at  first  sight,  all  these  portraits 
of  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  their  delicacy;  the  vigour  and 
firmness  beneath  them  are  often  veiled.  But  there 
are  moments  when  the  true  word  comes  to  the  sur- 
face, the  keen  expression  breaks  forth.  The  "impu- 
dence" of  Mme.  de  Montespan,  who  grows  bolder 
with  her  successive  pregnancies;  the  "baseness"  of 
the  Condes,  ambitious  to  ally  themselves  to  the  king 
by  all  his  bastard  branches  ;  all  such  traits  are 
boldly  sketched,  as  became  the  granddaughter  of  old 
d'Aubigne.  The  king,  having  married  the  Due  du 
Maine,  makes  representations  to  his  son  about  his 
wife,  who  is  ruining  him;  "but,"  says  Mme.  de 
Caylus,  "seeing  at  last  that  his  remonstrances  only 
served  to  make  a  son  whom  he  loved  suffer  inwardly, 
he    took    to    silence,    and    let    him    wallow    in    his 


328  /IDaDame  &e  Cri^lus. 

blindness  and  weakness."  There  is  nothing  feeble  in 
such  tones.  We  feel,  in  reading  these  accomplished 
women,  that  Moliere,  not  less  than  Racine,  was  present 
with  his  genius  beside  their  cradle,  and  that  Saint- 
Simon  was  not  far  off, 

1  could,  if  I  chose,  point  out  certain  jollities  in  Mme. 
de  Caylus  which  show  her,  in  a  softened  style  per- 
haps, a  true  daughter  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne.  She 
knows  how  to  change  her  tone  when  advisable  and 
proportion  her  touch  to  her  personages:  "Mile,  de 
Rambures  had  the  style  of  the  Nogent  family,  to 
which  her  mother  belonged:  lively,  daring,  and  all 
the  mind  that  is  needed  to  please  even  without  being 
beautiful.  She  attacked  the  king  and  did  not  dis- 
please him.  .  .  ."  That  is  how  she  speaks  when 
she  could  say  all;  and  close  beside  it  is  a  portrait 
drawn  in  two  lines:  "Mile,  de  Jarnac,  ugly  and  un- 
healthy; she  has,  so  they  say,  a  fine  complexion  which 
lights  up  her  ugliness."  None  but  Hamilton  or  a 
woman  could  find  such  shafts.  "She  had  malice  in 
her,"  says  Saint-Simon. 

Truthful  and  penetrating  minds  are  often  embarrassed 
by  their  role  in  this  world:  they  tell  what  they  see, 
the  thing  that  is,  and  they  run  the  risk  of  being 
thought  malicious.  Mme.  de  Caylus  was  only  a  truth- 
ful painter,  who  could  not  keep  herself  from  catching 
objects  to  the  life  as  she  passed  along,  be  those  ob- 
jects Mile,  de  Jarnac,  with  her  ugliness  set  in  its  finest 
light,  or  the  bewitching  Mile,  de  Lowenstein,  with  her 


/roa&ame  t)e  Cai^lus,  329 

"nymph-like  waist  still  further  set  off  by  a  flame- 
coloured  ribbon."  The  whole  series  of  pictures  in 
which  she  shows  us  the  squadron  of  the  dauphine's 
maids  of  honour,  and,  in  general,  the  long  file  of 
Court  ladies,  resembles  a  gallery  of  Hamilton,  same 
date,  same  cleverness  of  brush,  same  delicate  caus- 
ticity, at  moments  cruel.  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  mistress, 
in  her  way,  of  the  art  of  that  continual  irony  in  which 
she  speaks,  and  which  the  wittiest  of  foreign  women, 
even  those  who  are  naturalised  among  us,  seldom 
catch.  The  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne,  born  in  Savoie, 
though  very  French  in  many  respects,  never  attained 
it;  saying  sometimes  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon:  "  Aunt, 
they  turn  everything  into  ridicule  here!" 

Of  a  truth,  there  were  many  things  to  ridicule. 
The  anecdotes  of  Mme.  de  Caylus  are  little  scenes 
which,  lightly  sketched  in,  leave  an  ineffaceable  im- 
pression of  the  comic.  Will  you  have  a  scene  in 
which  M.  de  Montausier,  or  Bossuet  himself  plays  the 
comic  role  ?  It  is  on  the  eve  of  some  Holy  Week  or 
jubilee;  the  king,  who  was  now  religious,  wanted  to 
sever  himself  from  Mme.  de  Montespan,  who,  in  her 
way,  was  becoming  religious  too.  Whereupon  the 
lovers  part,  and  each  goes  his  and  her  own  way  to 
mourn  their  sins.  But  here  let  Mme.  de  Caylus  take 
up  her  inimitable  tale: 

"  The  jubilee  over,  gained  or  not  gained,  it  was  a  question  of 
knowing  whether  Mme.  de  Montespan  should  return  to  Court:  '  Why 
not  ? '  said  her  parents  and  friends,  even  the  most  virtuous,  such  as 


33°  /IDa^ame  &e  Callus. 

M.  de  Montausier.  '  Mme.  de  Montespan  by  birth  and  office  ought 
to  be  there,  and  she  can  live  in  as  Christian  a  manner  there  as  else- 
where.' The  Bishop  of  Meaux  [Bossuet]  was  of  that  opinion.  There 
remained,  they  added,  one  difficulty:  Should  Mme.  de  Montespan  ap- 
pear before  the  king  without  preparation  ?  They  ought  surely  to  see 
each  other  before  meeting  in  public,  to  avoid  the  inconveniences  of 
surprise.  On  this  ground,  it  was  decided  that  the  king  should  come 
to  Mme.  de  Montespan's  apartments;  but,  in  order  not  to  give  the 
slightest  subject  for  scandal  to  lay  hold  of,  it  was  arranged  that  certain 
respectable  ladies,  the  gravest  at  Court,  should  be  present  at  the  in- 
terview, and  that  the  king  should  see  Mme.  de  Montespan  in  their 
presence  only.  The  king  accordingly  came  to  Mme.  de  Montespan's 
apartments,  as  it  had  been  arranged;  but,  little  by  little,  he  drew  her 
into  the  embrasure  of  a  window;  they  talked  in  a  low  voice  for  some 
time,  weeping,  and  saying  what  is  usually  said  in  such  cases;  finally, 
they  made  a  profound  bow  to  the  venerable  matrons  and  retired  to 
an  inner  apartment;  the  result  was  Mme.  la  Duchesse  d'Orleans,  and 
later  M.  le  Comte  de  Toulouse." 

These  were  the  last  of  the  seven  children  that  the 
king  had  by  Mme.  de  Montespan. 

"I  cannot,"  adds  Mme.  de  Caylus,  "keep  myself 
from  saying  a  thought  that  is  in  my  mind:  it  seems  to 
me  that  one  can  still  see  in  the  character,  in  the  coun- 
tenance, in  the  whole  person  of  Mme.  la  Duchesse 
d'Orleans  traces  of  this  struggle  between  love  and  the 
jubilee."  ' 

Was  there  ever  a  way  of  telling  a  story  more 
lively,  gayer,  bolder,  more  spontaneous,  more  natural! 
Nothing  half-told,  or  told  too  much;  all  is  sketched 
in,  painted  in,  but  nothing  emphasised. 

This  leads  us  to  the  examination  of  another  ques- 

'  A  jubilee  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  a  solemn  and  general 
plenary  indulgence  granted  by  the  Pope  on  certain  occasions  and  un- 
der certain  conditions. — Tr. 


flDa^ame  &e  Callus.  331 

tion,  which  has  already  been  touched  upon,  and  with 
which  the  name  of  Mme.  de  Cayius  has  been  mingled 
from  the  beginning.  What  is  urbanity  ?  in  what  does 
it  properly  consist  ?  Is  it  wholly  in  the  conciseness 
and  appropriateness  of  a  witty  saying?  is  it  in  irony, 
in  pleasantry,  in  gaiety,  or  must  we  seek  it  else- 
where ?  An  abbe,  a  learned  man,  and  a  wit,  the 
Abbe  Gedoyn,  the  same  who  translated  Quintilian, 
and  translated  him  all  the  better  because  he  had  been 
a  friend  of  Ninon  (to  be  with  Ninon  was  always  use- 
ful),— the  Abbe  Gedoyn,  I  say,  has  written  on  this 
question  of  urbanity,  and  he  ends  his  agreeable  and 
learned  treatise  by  adding  a  eulogy  on  Mme.  de 
Cayius,  remarking  that  of  all  the  persons  he  had 
known  there  was  none  who  showed  in  so  living  a 
manner  what  he  meant  by  the  word  urbanity.  Let 
us  see  what  the  amiable  abbe  understood  by  that 
word;  we  shall  still  be  concerned  with  Mme.  de 
Cayius. 

According  to  the  Abbe  Gedoyn,  urbanity,  that 
wholly  Roman  word,  which,  in  its  origin,  signified 
only  softness  and  purity  of  the  language  of  the  city 
(urbs)  in  opposition  to  the  language  of  the  provinces, 
and  which  was  for  Rome  what  atticism  was  for 
Athens, — that  word  came  after  awhile  to  express  the 
characteristic  of  politeness,  not  only  of  speech  and  ac- 
cent, but  of  mind  and  manners,  and  the  whole  air 
of  individuals.  Then,  with  time  and  usage,  it  came 
to  express  still  more,  and  to  signify  not  only  a  quality 


332  /DaDame  &e  Callus. 

of  language  and  of  mind,  but  also  a  sort  of  virtue  and 
social  and  moral  quality  that  made  a  man  amiable  to 
others,  that  embellished  and  made  secure  the  social 
intercourse  of  life.  In  this  complete  and  charming 
sense,  urbanity  requires  a  nature  of  kindness  and 
gentleness,  even  in  malice.  Irony  suits  it,  but  irony 
that  has  nothing  that  is  not  amiable,  irony  which  has 
been  v^ell  defined  as  "the  spice  of  urbanity."  To 
have  urbanity,  as  Gedoyn  understands  it,  is  to  have 
morals ;  not  morals  in  the  austere  sense,  but  in  the 
antique  sense:  Horace  and  Csesar  had  them.  To  have 
morals  in  this  delicate  sense,  which  is  that  of  honour- 
able persons,  is:  not  to  think  more  of  one's  self  than 
of  others,  not  to  preach,  not  to  insult  any  one  in  the 
name  of  morality.  Harsh,  rustic,  savage,  and  fanatical 
minds  are  excluded  from  urbanity;  the  crabbed  critic, 
accurate  though  he  be,  can  make  no  pretension  to  it. 
Melancholy  minds  are  not  admitted;  for  a  certain 
foundation  of  joy  and  gaiety  is  in  all  urbanity,  there 
are  smiles.  If  we  consider  the  extreme  pains  taken 
by  the  ancients  to  give  to  their  children,  from  the 
mother's  breast,  this  delicate  tact,  this  exquisite  sensi- 
bility, we  are  struck  with  the  difference  in  modern 
education: 

"When  one  sees,"  remarks  the  great  mind  of  Bolingbroke,  "the 
care,  the  pains,  the  constant  diligence  that  went  to  form  the  great 
men  of  antiquity,  we  wonder  that  there  were  not  more  of  them; 
and  when  we  reflect  on  the  education  of  youth  in  our  day,  we 
are  astonished  that  a  single  man  arises  who  is  capable  of  being 
useful  to  his  country." 


^a^ame  t>c  Callus,  333 

That  remark,  which  seems  very  severe  if  extended 
over  the  whole  of  education,  is  evidently  true  if  ap- 
plied only  to  urbanity.  Comparing  on  this  point  the 
education  of  our  day  with  that  of  the  ancients,  we  are 
surprised  that  anything  remains  to  us  of  the  word  or 
of  the  thing.  At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
that  is  to  say,  the  most  glorious  moment  of  our  past, 
complaint  of  this  decadence  was  already  being  made, 
and  yet  it  was  the  golden  age  of  urbanity.  The 
women  of  that  time,  with  the  facility  of  nature  which 
in  all  ages  has  distinguished  them,  succeeded  better 
than  men  in  presenting  perfect  models  of  that  which 
we  are  seeking;  they  sowed  the  seeds  of  it,  as  it  were, 
upon  the  air  they  breathed.  It  is  in  them,  among 
those  who  wrote,  that  we  shall  more  surely  find  proof 
of  that  becoming  freedom  and  familiarity,  that  delicate 
satire,  that  ease  in  saying  all  things,  which  fulfilled 
the  conditions  of  the  ancients  all  the  more  because 
they  themselves  were  unaware  of  it.  "All  that  is 
excessive  is  necessarily  unbecoming,  and  all  that  is 
laboured  cannot  have  grace."  So  say  Quintilian  and 
Gedoyn,  and  we  can  verify  the  remark  in  reading  the 
simple  pages  of  Mme.  de  Caylus.  The  Abbe  Gedoyn 
felt  it  so  much  (and  it  is  to  his  honour)  that,  having 
ended  his  treatise  with  a  sort  of  compliment  to  the 
Academicians  before  whom  he  read  it,  he  hastens 
to  add  a  postscript,  indicating  Mme.  de  Caylus  as  the 
most  conclusive  example,  the  supporting  evidence  of 
his  words. 


334  /IDa^ame  &e  Cai^Ius. 

The  Eulogy  of  Mme.  de  Caylus,  printed  at  the  end 
of  Gedoyn's  treatise,  which  is  from  the  pen  of  an  M. 
Remond  (one  of  those  lazy  dilettanti  who  have  left  but 
a  few  lines  behind  them),  shows  her  to  us  in  a  new 
light  even  after  the  praises  of  Choisy  and  Saint-Simon. 
We  see  her  beautiful  for  many  years,  always  agree- 
able, combining  the  flowers  of  mind  of  a  Mme.  de 
La  Sabliere  with  the  solid  foundation  of  a  Mme.  de  La 
Fayette;  with  a  gift  of  varied  conversation  and  choice 
of  topics,  sometimes  serious,  sometimes  gay,  by  no 
means  hating  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  but  redoubling 
her  sallies  when  there,  and  presiding  as  a  goddess, 
like  the  Helen  of  Homer: 

"Mme.  de  Caylus,"  says  M.  Remond,  "led  farther  than  Helen; 
she  shed  a  joy  so  sweet,  so  bright,  a  taste  for  pleasure  so  noble 
and  so  elegant  into  the  souls  of  her  guests,  that  all  ages  and  all 
characters  were  made  to  seem  amiable  and  happy.  So  surprising 
is  the  power,  or,  rather,  the  magic  of  a  woman  who  possesses  a 
veritable  charm." 

There  may  be,  perhaps,  in  that  word  "charm,"  and 
in  the  comparison  with  Helen  of  Troy,  something 
alarming  and  misleading,  if  we  did  not  know  that  this 
portrait  of  Mme.  de  Caylus  was  written  in  her  last 
years,  after  her  youth;  and  the  charms  referred  to  are 
those  of  her  mind.  It  is  thus  that  we  must  under- 
stand another  passage  in  the  same  Eulogy,  where  it  is 
said:  "As  soon  as  men  made  her  acquaintance  they 
were  ready  to  quit  their  mistresses  without  a  thought, 
because  they  then  began  to  please  them  less;  it  was 


^aDame  &e  Caplus.  335 

difficult  to  live  in  her  society  witliout  becoming  her 
friend  and  her  lover."  These  lively  expressions  of  the 
platonic  writer  only  the  better  render  that  joy  of  the 
spirit,  that  pure  intoxication  of  grace  unconsciously 
shed  around  her. 

For — to  return  once  more  to  the  conclusion  of  Quin- 
tilian,  interpreted  to  modern  minds  by  Gedoyn — ease, 
discretion,  delicacy,  no  emphasis,  no  driving  to  an 
end,  are,  undoubtedly,  conditions  of  urbanity;  but  all 
would  be  as  nothing  without  a  certain  spirit  of  joy 
and  kindliness  that  inspires  the  whole:  "which  is 
properly  charm,"  said  La  Fontaine. 

I  shall  not  insist  any  longer  on  the  lightsome  graces 
of  the  writer  of  the  little  book  of  Souvenirs,  never 
completed,  but  so  agreeable,  so  prettily  turned,  that 
we  are  glad  to  reread  them  and  refresh  our  memories 
with  things  well  known,  but  especially  to  freshen  our 
taste  for  the  swift  and  airy  manner  of  telling  them. 
In  the  art  of  portraiture,  without  seeming  to  attempt 
it,  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  unrivalled.  But  where  I  es- 
pecially ask  my  readers  to  follow  me  is  into  her  Cor- 
respondence with  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  This  goes 
back  to  the  time  when  Mme.  de  Caylus,  a  young  and 
pretty  widow,  was  living  in  disgrace  in  Paris  and 
before  her  return  to  Versailles.  Mme.  de  Maintenon 
sends  her  good  advice  upon  her  conduct,  so  strict  and 
cold  that  it  would  have  given  any  one  who  was  its 
object  a  desire  to  go  against  it.  Mme.  de  Caylus 
neither    obeyed    nor    disobeyed    it    wholly.     Once 


33^  /iDaC)ame  be  Callus, 

returned  to  Versailles,  we  see  her  in  her  letters  —  or 
rather  her  short  notes,  written  from  one  room  to 
another  —  displaying  all  her  grace  and  prettiness  to 
soften  her  aunt,  to  amuse  and  brighten  her.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon,  so  agreeable  in  mind,  had  a  grave  back- 
ground, sad,  and  even  austere;  she  had  amassed  a 
burden  of  ejinui  in  amusing  others;  she  had  withered 
her  own  soul  in  striving  to  please,  from  her  youth  up, 
those  who  were  greater  than  she.  So,  when  she  found 
herself  alone,  she  enjoyed  solitude  as  a  relaxation  and 
rest.  Mme.  de  Caylus  did  all  she  could  to  obtain 
access  to  her  aunt  in  those  rare  moments;  she  coaxed 
her,  she  teased  her  with  all  due  respect  to  make  her 
smile:  "I  don't  know  what  the  Academy  would  say 
of  the  word  acoquiner,"  she  writes,  "but  I  feel  all  its 
energy  in  you."  She  calls  herself  the  "superintend- 
ent of  her  pleasures,"  and  complains  that  the  office  is 
dwindling  in  her  hands. 

Mme.  de  Maintenon  had  now  become  indispensable 
to  the  king  and  to  the  whole  royal  family,  who  never 
gave  her  a  single  instant's  respite.  Even  when  the 
king  worked  with  his  ministers  she  must  be  there. 
Oh!  in  those  moments  how  Mme.  de  Caylus  would 
have  liked  to  sit  smiling  and  silent  beside  her  aunt! 
"Who  does  not  see  you,  enjoys  nothing,"  she  cries  ; 
"I  have  infinite  regret  in  not  sharing  with  you  the 
back  of  M.  Peletier" — doubtless  M.  Le  Peletier  de 
Souzy,  a  director-general  and  councillor  of  State,  who 
worked  every  week  with  the  king.     Another   day. 


/lDa&ame  &e  Callus.  337 

she  envies  Fanchon,  the  chambermaid:  "Why  can- 
not I  slip  in  under  her  form  during  the  absence  of  M. 
de  Pontchartrain's  back?" — M.  de  Pontchartrain  being 
the  least  amusing  of  the  ministers.  Here  is  one  of 
her  prettiest  letters,  in  which  she  speaks  of  herself 
as  the  "little  niece,"  and  claims  from  her  aunt  the 
favour  of  seeing  her  oftener. 

"  1  reflect  about  your  week;  and  I  cannot  think  it  well  arranged  that 
there  should  not  be  more  in  it  of  the  little  niece;  why  not  have  more 
of  the  little  family?  She  will  be  just  as  stupid  at  cards  as  you  could 
wish;  she  will  work  so  sedately;  she  will  listen,  or  read  to  you  with 
so  much  pleasure.  Finally,  and  this  perhaps  is  the  best  way  to  make 
you  receive  her,  she  will  go  away  at  the  slightest  sign.  If  you  choose 
to  leave  her  with  the  company,  she  assures  you,  without  hypocrisy, 
that  she  will  find  more  time  for  it  than  is  needed;  she  sees  nothing  in  it, 
after  all,  but  the  coterie,  and  those  marshals  of  France,  who  do  not 
charm  her  to  the  point  of  not  being  able  to  do  without  them;  she 
fears  the  ministers;  she  does  not  like  the  princesses;  if  it  is  repose  you 
desire  for  her,  she  can  only  have  it  with  you;  if  it  is  her  health,  she 
finds  with  you  her  regimen  and  remedy:  in  a  word,  she  finds  all  with 
you,  and  without  you  nothing.  After  this  sincere  statement,  order — 
but  not  as  a  Neron." 

That  term  'Niron  often  recurs  under  her  pen  to 
express  gaily  the  negative  habit  of  Mme.  de  Mainte- 
non,  inexorable  in  the  privations  she  imposed  on 
others  as  well  as  on  herself  One  day  Mme.  de  Cay- 
lus  sent  her  a  little  distaff;  for  Mme.  de  Maintenon 
liked  to  spin  with  her  own  hands;  it  served  as  an 
exhibition  of  modesty  and  simplicity  added  to  all  the 
rest.  But  listen  to  the  pretty  chatter  with  which 
Mme.  de  Caylus  surrounds  her  distaff  in  sending  it; 

"Why   have  I  not   all  the   graces  of  a   lively  wit  to  introduce 
VOL.  n. — 22. 


338  /iDaDame  Oe  Caplus. 

into  your  solitude  the  liveliest  of  distaffs!  It  is  pretty,  if  you  will; 
but,  besides  that,  it  is  given  you  by  a  person  who,  when  she  is 
beside  you,  would  fain  never  lose  it  from  sight.  .  .  .  Go, 
my  distaff;  there  is  no  irony  in  saying  that  1  envy  you:  nothing 
can  be  more  true." 

She  is  inexhaustible  in  her  turns  and  returns  of 
charming  insistence  on  this  perpetual  theme;  she  tries 
to  send  to  that  old  age,  which  seeks  to  mortify  itself, 
a  ray  of  her  own  brightness.  "I  am  angry  with  the 
sun  for  shining  so  brilliantly  into  my  room  when  you 
are  not  in  it." 

Towards  the  end,  she  enters  so  fully  into  her  aunt's 
spirit  that  she  is  wholly  one  with  it,  and  conspires 
with  her  in  diverting  the  king:  "It  is  certain  that  we 
are  doing  a  great  service  to  the  State  in  keeping  the 
king  alive  by  amusing  him." 

Mme.  de  Maintenon,  in  spite  of  her  airs  of  resist- 
ance, was  not  insensible  to  such  winning  grace.  The 
Princesse  des  Ursins,  in  her  letters  to  her,  never  ceased 
to  praise  her  "friend"  from  the  moment  she  returned 
to  Court  and  to  the  favour  of  her  aunt;  she  varies  her 
praise  in  many  keys:  "There  is  nothing  artificial 
about  her;  she  is  as  lovable  in  mind  as  she  is  in 
face."  "You  will  find  infinite  resources  in  her,  no 
one  having  more  intelligence,  or  being  more  amusing, 
without  any  malignity."  Mme.  de  Maintenon  in  the 
end  acknowledges  in  reply  that  she  is  almost  con- 
quered: 

"It  is  true  that  1  get  on  better  with  Mme.  de  Caylus  than  for- 
merly,  because  she  seems  to  me  to  have   recovered   from    her   ob- 


/IDadame  ^c  daplus.  339 

stinacy  about  Jansenism,  finding  it  difficult  to  be  agreeably  placed 
among  persons  who  think  differently;  her  face  is  as  charming  as 
ever,  but  she  has  a  form  that  disfigures  her  much;  for  the  rest,  I 
see  no  woman  here  so  reasonable." 


Whether  this  change  was  caused  by  some  little 
emotion  entering  Mme.  de  Maintenon's  heart,  or 
merely  by  a  liking  for  intelligence,  it  is  certain  that 
she  had  a  weakness  for  this  niece  that  she  felt  for  no 
other  person.  She  calls  her  her  "true  niece,"  and 
after  Louis  XIV's  death  she  turns  to  her  with  solid 
friendship.  It  is  true  that  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  perfect 
in  manner,  respectful,  and  at  the  same  time  familiar; 
she  knows  so  well  the  proper  distance  to  keep  in 
writing  to  her,  the  degree  of  information  she  must 
give,  the  sad  news  of  society  and  the  vexatious  truths 
she  must  not  conceal,  and  others  on  which  it  would 
be  useless  to  enlarge;  she  knows  well  how  to  be 
serious  as  her  pen  runs  on.  "I  say  nothing  to  you 
of  the  beauty  of  your  letters,"  writes  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon,  "lest  I  should  seem  to  flatter,  and  at  my  age 
one  must  not  change  one's  nature." 

We  might,  however,  take  too  serious  an  idea  of 
Mme.  de  Caylus  if  we  confined  ourselves  to  her  let- 
ters. In  writing  to  her  aunt,  she  presents  herself 
without  hypocrisy,  but  in  her  most  matter-of-fact 
and  sober  aspect;  doubtless  she  allowed  her  to  see 
but  one-half  of  her  life.  In  her  little  house  in  the 
Luxembourg  gardens,  which  is  isolated  and  quite 
rural,  and  which  was  reached  only  by  a  long  and 


340  /lDat>ame  t)e  Cabins. 

winding  way,  she  appears  to  us  like  some  country 
lady  returning  for  a  time  from  the  grandeurs  of  Ver- 
sailles : 

"It  is  a  delight  to  rise  early;  I  look  out  of  my  window  over 
my  whole  empire;  I  take  pride  in  seeing  under  my  rule  twelve 
hens,  one  cock,  eight  chicks;  a  cellar  which  I  transform  into  a 
dairy;  a  cow  pastured  near  the  entrance  to  the  great  garden  by  a 
tolerance  that  may  not  be  of  long  duration.  1  dare  not  ask  Mme. 
de  Berry  to  endure  a  cow.     Alas!    it  is  enough  that   she  endures 


The  Duchesse  de  Berry,  here  mentioned,  was  that 
daughter  of  the  Regent  who  filled  the  palace  of  the 
Luxembourg  with  her  orgies.  Mme.  de  Caylus, 
making  allusion  to  them,  says  elsewhere,  in  a  fancy 
full  of  thought:  "I  am  very  well  pleased  here;  I  lose 
not  a  ray  of  sun,  nor  a  word  of  the  vespers  of  a 
seminary  (Saint-Sulpice)  where  women  cannot  enter; 
'tis  thus  that  life  is  mingled — on  one  side,  this  palace; 
on  the  other,  the  praises  of  God." 

Mme.  de  Maintenon,  good  churchwoman  that  she 
was,  felt,  surely  enough,  that  this  charming  niece  had 
not  become  a  recluse,  and  that  she  was  still  receiving 
friends  of  all  kinds.  "You  may  know  how  to  do 
without  pleasures,"  she  writes,  "  but  pleasures  cannot 
do  without  you." 

Such  was  Mme.  de  Caylus,  so  far  as  we  can 
resuscitate  her  from  the  few  pages  we  possess,  in 
which,  after  all,  we  have  but  the  smallest  part  of 
herself.  But,  by  the  help  of  contemporary  testimony, 
1  feel  sure  that  I  have  given  her  nought  that  does  not 


/IDa^ame  De  Callus.  341 

belong  to  her  in  seeking  to  defend  her.  This  eldest 
daughter  of  Saint-Cyr,  this  sister  of  Esther,  who  did 
not  confine  herself  wholly  to  that  gentle  part,  is,  as  it 
were,  the  last  flower  of  the  epoch,  then  closing,  of 
Louis  XIV;  in  nothing  did  she  breathe  the  spirit  of 
the  coming  age.  Coming  after  the  La  Fayette,  the 
Sevigne,  the  Maintenon,  cultivated  by  those  women, 
and  admiring  them,  she  resembled  them  only  so  far  as 
to  detach  herself  from  them;  she  shines  as  their  fol- 
lower, the  youngest,  the  gayest,  but  with  her  own 
distinct  brilliancy,  and  her  delicacy  without  pallor. 


XII. 

Ifenelom 


343 


XII. 

ffenelon.' 

THE  volume  which  will  here  concern  us — Lettres 
et  Opuscules  de  Fenelon — is  added  as  an  in- 
dispensable complement  to  the  twenty-two 
volumes  of  his  CEuvres  and  to  the  eleven  volumes  of 
his  Correspondance,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  very  fine  and 
very  good  edition  presided  over  by  the  Abbe  Gosselin 
and  the  Abbe  Caron.     This  new  volume  unites,  with 

'  The  following  Essay  is  not  a  brief  sketch  of  Fenelon's  life,  such  as 
Sainte-Beuve  gave  of  Moliere,  La  Fontaine,  and  others;  it  is  a  review 
of  his  Letters,  with  incidental  comments  on  his  life  and  character. 
Some  parts  of  it  are  here  omitted.  Fenelon  was  attached  to  the  Semi- 
nary of  Saint-Sulpice  when  the  Due  de  Beauvilliers,  governor  of  the 
Due  de  Bourgogne,  son  of  Monseigneur,  the  only  son  of  Louis  XIV, 
selected  him  as  tutor  for  the  young  prince.  In  that  capacity  he  won 
the  respect  and  affection  of  all  until  he  came  under  the  influence 
of  Mme.  Guyon  and  showed  leanings  toward  mysticism.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon,  the  king,  and  the  clergy  influential  at  Court  turned  against 
him,  and  occasion  was  offered  by  his  publication  of  a  certain  book, 
Maximes  des  Saints,  to  send  him  into  exile  in  his  archbishopric  of 
Cambrai.  With  a  beautiful  nature,  he  was  cautious,  ambitious,  and 
something  of  a  time-server:  had  he  possessed  the  courage  of  his  opin- 
ions we  might  have  known  more  of  the  mystical  truth  revealed  by 
Mme.  Guyon,  who  was  then  what  we  should  now  call  a  seer,  or,  per- 
haps, a  medium.  Had  Fenelon  been  a  stronger  man  the  doctrine  of 
Quietism,  so  called,  might  have  done  more  work  in  the  world. — Tr. 

345 


346  ffenelon. 

some  writings  not  witiiout  interest  and  a  few  letters 
of  business  and  administration,  other  letters  of  spir- 
itual guidance,  and  especially  certain  charming  letters 
of  friendship  and  familiarity:  in  them  we  find  the 
whole  of  Fenelon.  Some  of  them  are  addressed  to 
Mme.  de  Maintenon,  by  whom,  as  we  know,  Fenelon 
was  greatly  protected,  consulted,  and  listened  to  until 
she  had  the  weakness  to  abandon  him. 

Saint-Simon,  in  his  Memoirs,  has  so  vividly  re- 
lated the  arrival  of  Fenelon  at  Court,  his  initiation  into 
the  little  inmost  circle  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon  and  the 
Dues  de  Beauvilliers  and  de  Chevreuse,  the  rapid  rise 
of  the  fortunate  prelate,  so  quickly  followed  by  many 
vicissitudes,  a  great  downfall,  and  that  shipwreck  of 
hopes  which  is  to-day  so  touching  a  part  of  his  fame, 
that  one  can  only  send  the  reader  to  such  a  painter^ 
feeling  it  to  be  a  profanation  to  rewrite  the  picture,, 
even  though  we  may  think  some  points  of  it  rash. 
Saint-Simon  was  gifted  with  a  twofold  genius  seldom 
united  to  the  degree  we  find  in  him :  he  received 
from  nature  the  gift  of  penetration,  almost  of  intui- 
tion, the  gift  of  reading  minds  and  hearts  through  the 
countenance,  and  of  seizing  thus  upon  the  secret  play 
of  motives  and  intentions;  he  carried  into  this  piercing 
observation  of  the  masks  and  actors  who  swarmed 
around  him  in  vast  numbers  a  vigour,  an  ardour  of 
curiosity  that  seems  at  times  insatiable,  and  almost 
cruel:  the  eager  anatomist  is  not  more  prompt  to 
open  the  still  palpitating  breast,  and  to  probe  it  in 


Ifenelon.  347 

every  direction  to  find  the  hidden  wound.  To  this 
first  gift  of  instinctive  and  irresistible  penetration, 
Saint-Simon  added  another,  which  also  is  seldom 
found  with  the  same  degree  of  power,  and  the  daring 
use  of  which  constitutes  him  unique  in  his  own 
special  work:  that  which  he  had,  as  it  were,  wrenched 
out  with  his  relentless  curiosity,  he  could  write  down 
with  the  same  fire,  the  same  ardour,  and  almost  with 
the  same  fury  of  stroke.  La  Bruyere  also  had  the 
faculty  of  penetrating  and  sagacious  observation;  he 
notices,  he  uncovers  all  things  and  all  men  around 
him;  he  shrewdly  reads  the  secrets  on  all  the  fore- 
heads before  him;  then,  alone  in  his  study,  at  leisure, 
he  traces  his  portraits  with  delight,  with  skill,  and 
slowly;  he  begins  them  over  and  over,  he  retouches, 
he  caresses  them,  adding  feature  to  feature,  until  he 
finds  them  a  perfect  likeness.  It  is  not  so  with  Saint- 
Simon,  who,  after  his  days  at  Versailles  or  Marly, 
which  I  call  his  debauches  of  observation  (so  much 
did  he  amass  that  was  profuse,  conflicting,  and  di- 
verse), re-enters  his  own  room  at  fever-heat,  and 
there,  pen  in  hand,  at  full  speed,  without  resting,  with- 
out reading  over  his  words,  and  far  into  the  night,  he 
dashes  down,  all  living,  on  his  paper,  in  their  ampli- 
tude and  natural  confusion,  yet  with  an  incomparable 
clearness  of  relief,  the  crowd  of  personages  he  has 
passed  through,  the  originals  he  has  caught  on  his 
way  and  carried  off,  palpitating  still,  the  majority  of 
whom  have  become,  thanks  to  him,  immortal  victims. 


348  jpenelon. 

A  little  more  and  he  might  have  made  Fenelon  one 
of  those  victims;  for,  in  the  midst  of  the  charming 
and  delightful  qualities  he  recognises  in  him,  he  harps 
perpetually  on  a  secret  vein  of  ambition  which,  in  the 
degree  which  he  supposes,  would  have  made  Fenelon 
quite  another  man  to  the  one  we  like  to  see  in  reality. 
On  this  point,  I  think  that  this  picture  of  the  great 
painter  ought  to  undergo,  in  order  to  be  true,  a  slight 
reduction,  and  that  his  ardour  of  introspection  has 
taken  too  much  latitude.  He  did  not  penetrate  and 
live  at  leisure  in  all  parts  of  that  amiable  soul.  Saint- 
Simon  knew  Fenelon  through  the  Dues  de  Beauvil- 
liers  and  Chevreuse  as  well  as  a  man  can  be  known 
through  his  intimate  friends.  Personally,  he  knew 
him  very  little,  and  he  tells  us  so:  "1  knew  him  only 
by  sight,  being  too  young  when  he  was  exiled." 
Nevertheless,  to  such  a  painter,  that  mere  sight  was 
enough  to  let  him  grasp  and  marvellously  render 
Fenelon's  charm : 

"  This  prelate,"  he  says,  "was  a  tall,  thin  man,  well  made,  with  a 
large  nose,  eyes  from  which  the  fire  and  intellect  gushed  like  a  torrent, 
and  a  countenance  the  like  of  which  I  have  never  seen,  and  which, 
once  seen,  could  never  be  forgotten.  It  united  all  things;  yet  the 
contradictions  never  clashed.  It  had  gravity  and  gallantry,  solemnity 
and  gaiety;  it  equally  expressed  the  learned  man,  the  bishop,  and  the 
great  seigneur;  but  what  was  manifest  above  all,  and  in  his  whole 
person  as  well  as  in  his  countenance,  was  elegance,  refinement,  intel- 
lect, grace,  decorum,  and,  especially,  nobleness.  It  required  an  effort 
to  cease  looking  at  him.     .     .     ." 

When  a  writer  has  once  painted  a  man  in  that  way, 
and  shown  him  gifted  with  such  powers  of  attraction, 


ifenelom  349 

he  can  never  be  afterwards  accused  of  calumniating 
him,  even  though  he  may  be  mistaken  on  some  points. 
With  Saint-Simon  we  can  best  confute  and  correct 
Saint-Simon  himself  Read  what  he  says  so  ad- 
mirably about  the  Due  de  Bourgogne,  that  cherished 
pupil  of  Fenelon,  who  never  ceased  to  guide  him 
from  afar,  even  from  his  exile  at  Cambrai,  through 
the  channels  of  the  Dues  de  Beauvilliers  and  Chev- 
reuse.  The  young  prince,  whom  Saint-Simon  shows 
to  us  first  as  haughty,  impetuous,  terribly  passionate 
by  nature,  and  contemptuous  of  all  about  him,  of 
whom  he  could  say:  "From  the  height  of  his  skies 
he  looked  on  men  as  atoms  with  whom  he  had 
nothing  in  common,  whatever  they  might  be" — this 
same  young  prince,  at  a  certain  moment,  transformed 
himself,  and  became  a  wholly  different  man,  pious, 
humane,  charitable,  as  well  as  enlightened,  attentive 
to  his  duties,  wholly  absorbed  in  his  responsibility  as 
future  king,  and  daring  to  utter,  he  the  heir  of  Louis 
XIV  and  in  the  salons  of  Marly,  a  saying  fitted  to 
make  the  very  arches  crumble:  "A  king  is  made  for 
his  subjects  and  not  the  subjects  for  him."  Well, 
that  young  prince  thus  presented  by  Saint-Simon, 
whose  death  tore  from  him — from  him,  the  inexorable 
observer — words  of  emotional  eloquence  and  tears, 
who  was  it  who  thus  transformed  him  ?  Allowing 
for  the  part  due  to  that  which  is  mysterious  and  in- 
visible in  changes  of  heart,  even  that  which  is  called 
grace;  allowing  for  the  share  of  the  venerable   Due 


35°  ff^nelon. 

de  Beauvilliers,  the  excellent  governor,  who,  I  ask, 
among  human  instruments,  played  so  large  a  part 
as  Fenelon  ?  Near  or  far,  he  never  ceased  to  guide 
his  pupil,  to  inculcate  upon  him,  and  to  insinuate 
into  him  that  maxim  oi  father  of  the  nation:  "that  a 
king  is  made  for  the  people,"  and  all  that  hangs 
upon  it. 

We  now  know,  in  some  respects,  more  than  Saint- 
Simon  knew:  we  have  the  confidential  letters  of 
Fenelon,  addressed  at  all  periods  to  the  young  prince; 
the  notes  that  he  wrote  down  for  him,  the  plans  of 
reform,  all  the  papers  then  kept  secret  but  now  di- 
vulged, and  which,  allowing  to  human  ambition  the 
place  it  must  always  hold  in  every  man  even  in  his 
virtues,  show  the  latter  as  belonging  to  the  highest 
rank,  and  place  for  evermore  in  its  full  light  the  gen- 
erous and  patriotic  soul  of  Fenelon. 

Bossuet  also,  in  concert  with  the  Due  de  Montausier, 
trained  a  pupil,  the  first  dauphin,  Monseigneur,  father 
of  the  Due  de  Bourgogne;  it  was  for  that  royal  and 
little  worthy  pupil  that  he  composed  many  admirable 
works,  beginning  with  the  Discours  sur  I'Histoire 
Universelle,  of  which  posterity  will  for  ever  reap  the 
benefit.  But  looking  at  the  matter  closely,  what  dif- 
ference of  care  and  solicitude  !  Monseigneur,  no 
doubt,  was  less  amenable  to  instruction,  possessed  as 
he  was  by  a  gentleness  that  amounted  to  apathy. 
The  Due  de  Bourgogne,  with  passions  and  even 
vices,   had  at  least  an  inward  impulse   revealing  the 


3feneIon.  351 

sacred  fire.  "Eager  and  excitable  natures,"  says 
Fenelon,  "are  capable  of  terrible  errors;  passions  and 
presumption  lead  them  astray;  but  also  they  have 
great  inward  resources,  and  often  they  return  from 
very  great  distances  ,  .  .  whereas,  one  has  little 
or  no  hold  on  sluggish  natures."  Yet  we  see  that 
Bossuet  did  very  nearly,  in  order  to  conquer  the 
laziness  of  his  pupil  and  spur  his  sensibility,  what 
Fenelon  did  in  the  second  case  to  subdue  and  har- 
monise the  violence  of  his.  The  first  great  man  did 
his  duty  with  amplitude  and  majesty,  as  he  was  wont 
to  do  it,  and  then  passed  on.  The  second  continued 
his  attentions  and  fears,  his  ingenious  and  vigilant 
cares,  his  insinuating  and  persuasive  appeals,  as  if  he 
were  held  to  them  by  some  bond  of  nature  itself;  he 
had  the  tenderness  of  a  mother. 

To  return  to  the  present  volume;  I  have  said  that 
we  there  find  some  letters  which  Fenelon,  lately  ar- 
rived at  Court,  addressed  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  still 
under  the  spell  of  his  charm.  The  tone  of  his  Lettres 
Spirittielles  is,  in  general,  delicate,  refined,  easy,  and 
very  agreeable  to  gentle  and  feminine  minds,  but  a 
little  soft  and  tainted  with  the  jargon  of  Quietist 
spirituality;  we  feel  the  near  neighbourhood  of  Mme. 
Guyon.  Fenelon  is  also  too  much  given  to  infantile  and 
mincing  expressions,  such  as  Saint-Fran(;ois  de  Sales 
addressed  to  his  ideal,  his  Philothea.  Speaking  of  the 
familiarities  and  the  caresses  which,  according  to  him, 
the  Heavenly  Father  bestows  on  souls  that  become 


352  ifenelon. 

once  more  childlike  and  simple,  Fenelon,  for  example, 
says:  "  One  must  be  a  child,  O  my  God!  and  play  at 
thy  knee  to  deserve  them."  Theologians  have  quar- 
relled with  these  expressions,  and  others  like  them, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  doctrine;  severe  good  taste 
would  suffice  to  proscribe  them.  And  it  is  here  that 
the  manly  and  wholesome  manner  of  Bossuet,  brought 
to  bear  upon  all  subjects,  asserts  its  superiority. 

I  know,  in  speaking  thus  of  Fenelon's  letters,  the 
exceptions  that  ought  to  be  made;  some  are  very  fine 
on  all  points  and  very  solid;  such,  for  instance,  as  the 
one  to  a  lady  of  quality  on  the  education  of  her  daugh- 
ter; such  also  as  the  Lettres  sur  la  Religion,  supposed 
to  have  been  addressed  to  the  Due  d'Orleans  (the 
future  regent),  and  which  are  usually  placed  at  the 
end  of  the  treatise  on  L' Existence  de  Dieu.  But  1  am 
here  speaking  only  of  the  Lettres  Spirituelles,  properly 
so  called,  and  I  do  not  fear  that  those  who  have  read 
a  goodly  number  of  them  will  contradict  me. 

Mme.  de  Maintenon,  while  receiving  Fenelon's  let- 
ters, and  enjoying  their  infinite  delicacy,  judged  them, 
nevertheless,  with  the  excellent  mind  and  the  good 
common  sense  which  she  applied  to  all  that  did  not 
exceed  her  mental  range  and  the  horizon  of  her  daily 
life.  She  had  doubts  about  certain  expressions  a  little 
too  vivid  and  somewhat  rash,  the  details  of  which  I 
need  not  give  here.  To  clear  her  mind,  she  con- 
sulted another  confessor,  Godet,  Bishop  of  Chartres, 
and  Fenelon  was  called  upon  to  explain  and  justify 


ffenelon.  353 

himself.  In  his  explanation  (which  we  find  in  this 
volume),  by  which  he  endeavours  to  reduce  his  mys- 
tical and  rather  strange  expressions  to  their  proper 
value,  I  am  struck  with  an  habitual  skill  in  turning 
a  subject,  which  is  one  of  his  characteristics.  While 
maintaining  his  expressions,  or,  at  any  rate,  justifying 
them  by  means  of  respectable  authorities,  he  ends 
every  paragraph  by  saying,  and  repeating,  under  vari- 
ous forms:  "A  prophet  (or  a  saint)  has  already  said 
before  me  something  equivalent,  or  even  stronger; 
nevertheless,  I  submit."  That  constant  affirming  of 
submission,  reiterated  at  the  end  of  every  justification 
that  he  offers  as  convincing,  produces  in  the  long  run 
a  singular  effect,  and  actually  ends  by  annoying  those 
who  are  least  theological.  I  call  it  an  irritating  gentle- 
ness, and  the  impression  given  supports  the  remark 
of  M.  Joubert:  "The  mind  of  Fenelon  had  something 
softer  than  gentleness,  more  patient  than  patience"; 
which  also  is  a  fault. 

What,  of  a  certainty,  is  not  faulty,  is  the  general 
character  of  his  piety;  that  which  he  feels  and  that 
which  he  inspires.  He  desires  in  it  joy,  lightheart- 
edness,  sweetness;  he  would  banish  harshness  and 
sadness:  "Piety,"  he  said,  "has  nothing  weak,  nor 
sad,  nor  constrained;  it  widens  the  heart,  it  is  simple 
and  pleasant,  it  makes  itself  all  things  to  all  men  to 
win  all."  He  reduces  nearly  all  piety  to  love,  that  is, 
to  charity.  But  this  gentleness  in  him  is  not  weak- 
ness or  fawning  compliance.     In  the  few  letters  of 

VOL.  II. — 23. 


354  ifenelon, 

advice  to  Mme,  de  Maintenon  that  are  given  in  this 
volume,  he  lays  his  finger  on  essential  things;  on  that 
"self-love  that  seeks  to  take  all  upon  itself";  on  that 
slavery  to  consideration  by  others;  that  ambition  to 
appear  perfect  in  the  eyes  of  persons  of  note, —  in 
short,  all  that  constituted  the  foundation  of  her  pru- 
dent and  self-glorifying  nature.  There  is  in  the  Lettres 
Spirituelles  a  certain  variation  by  which  we  see 
Fenelon  adapting  and  proportioning  himself  to  indi- 
viduals, and  he  must  have  had  this  same  variety  in  his 
conversation.  The  Entretiens,  transmitted  to  us  by 
Ramsay,  in  which  Fenelon  developed  to  him  the 
reasons  that  ought  to  lead  every  one,  as  he  thought, 
from  deism  to  Catholicism,  are  of  a  breadth,  a  sim- 
ple beauty,  a  full  and  luminous  eloquence,  that  leave 
nothing  to  be  desired.  Just  as  L'Entretien  of  Pascal 
and  M.  de  Saci  is  one  of  the  finest  testimonies  to 
Pascal's  mind,  so  these  Entretiens  with  Ramsay  give 
the  highest  idea  of  Fenelon's  manner,  and  surpass  in 
breadth  of  tone  most  of  his  letters. 

The  most  interesting  part  of  the  volume  just  pub- 
lished is  a  series  of  familiar  letters  addressed  by 
Fenelon  to  one  of  his  friends,  a  soldier  of  merit,  the 
Chevalier  Destouches.  During  the  last  wars  of  Louis 
XIV,  all  who  were  most  distinguished  in  the  army 
(the  army  itself  passing  at  each  campaign  through 
Cambrai)  visited  Fenelon  and  received  his  hospitality. 
With  the  attraction  that  was  natural  to  him,  he  re- 
tained from  these   passing  acquaintances  more  than 


jfenelon.  355 

one  lasting  friend.  His  friendship  with  the  Chevalier 
Destouches  was  one  of  the  closest  and  tenderest. 
Destouches,  then  about  forty-three  years  of  age, 
served  with  distinction  in  the  artillery;  he  was  a  man 
of  intelligence,  cultivated,  taking  special  delight  in 
Virgil,  Dissipated  withal,  given  to  pleasures,  to 
those  of  the  table,  which,  for  him,  were  not  the 
only  ones;  and  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  his  inti- 
macy with  Fenelon  never  entirely  cured  him,  inas- 
much as  he  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  father  of 
d'Alembert,  by  Mme.  de  Tencin,  in  17 17.  However 
that  may  be,  Fenelon  loved  him,  and  that  word  re- 
deems all.  The  kindly  prelate  says  it  to  him  in  many 
tones,  scolding  him,  schooling  him,  and  seeing  plainly 
that  he  succeeded  very  little  in  reforming  him. 

"  If  you  were  to  show  my  letter,"  he  writes  to  him  one  April  day, 
"  to  some  grave  and  stern  censor,  he  would  not  fail  to  remark :  '  How 
can  that  old  bishop  (Fenelon  was  then  sixty-three)  love  a  man  so 
irreligious!'  It  is  a  great  scandal,  I  acknowledge;  but  how  can  I  cor- 
rect it  ?  The  truth  is,  I  find  two  men  in  you;  you  are  as  dual  as  Sosie, 
without  any  duplicity ;  on  the  one  side  you  are  bad  for  yourself;  on 
the  other  you  are  true,  upright,  noble  to  your  friends.  I  end  by 
words  of  protestation,  taken  from  your  friend,  Pliny  the  Younger: 
tieque  enim  amore  decipior.     .      .     ." 

That  is  to  say:  "Affection  does  not  blind  me;  it  is 
true  I  love  with  enthusiasm,  but  I  judge,  and  with  all 
the  more  penetration  because  I  love." 

This  correspondence  with  the  Chevalier  Destou- 
ches shows  Fenelon  to  us  in  the  sad  years  of  his 
exile  (1711-1714),  amusing  himself,  sometimes  with 


356  jfenelon. 

innocent  playfulness,  sporting,  like  Lelius  and  Scipio, 
after  loosening  his  belt.  He  seems  to  have  proposed  to 
himself  a  wager  in  this  correspondence,  as  if  he  had 
said  to  his  rather  libertine  friend:  "You  love  Virgil, 
you  like  to  quote  him;  well,  I'll  send  you  Horace;  I 
don't  require,  in  order  to  beat  you,  any  other  auxiliary 
than  he,  for  I  can  manage  to  insinuate  into  you  nearly 
all  the  Christian  advice  that  you  need,  or,  at  any  rate, 
all  that  would  be  useful  to  your  life,  by  disguising  it 
under  the  verses  of  Horace."  Horace,  in  fact,  appears 
on  every  page  of  the  letters ;  he  speaks  as  often  as  Fene- 
lon.  These  letters  give  an  idea  of  what  the  latter's 
conversation  must  have  been :  most  charming  and  dis- 
tinguished in  his  hours  of  gaiety  and  sportiveness; 
they  are  the  table-talk,  the  "after-dinner"  talk  of 
Fenelon,  all  that  we  can  fancy  most  playful  and  smiling 
in  the  moral  key.  We  catch,  as  though  we  were 
present,  the  habits  of  feeling  and  thinking,  the  exact 
tone  of  this  fine  nature.  Destouches  had  sent  the 
bishop  a  few  Latin  epitaphs:  "  Those  epitaphs,"  re- 
plies Fenelon,  "have  great  force,  each  line  is  an  epi- 
gram; they  are  historic  and  learned.  Those  who  made 
them  have  much  wit,  but  they  meant  to  have  it; 
whereas  wit  ought  to  come  by  chance  and  without 
reflection.  They  are  made  in  the  spirit  of  Tacitus, 
who  digs  into  evil."  Farther  on,  after  quoting  Ho- 
mer on  Peace,  Fenelon  recalls  a  stanza  by  Malherbe: 
"There  we  see  the  ancient  who  is  simple,  graceful, 
exquisite,  and  here  is  the  modern  who  has  his  own 


jfenelom  357 

beauty."  How  well  said  that  is!  how  well  observed 
the  proportion,  the  shades,  between  the  ancient  and 
the  modern  writer,  and  how  we  are  made  to  feel  that 
he  prefers  the  ancient! 

That  year,  171 1,  was  an  important  one  for  Fenelon. 
The  first  dauphin  died  in  April,  and  the  Due  de  Bour- 
gogne  became  the  heir,  and  to  all  appearance  the  im- 
mediate heir  to  the  throne.  In  his  distant  exile  at 
Cambrai  Fenelon  was  felt  by  all  to  receive  the  rays  of 
that  coming  grandeur,  and  to  reign  already  by  the  side 
of  his  royal  pupil.  Consulted  in  writing  on  all  mat- 
ters political  and  ecclesiastical,  umpire  much  listened 
to  secretly  in  the  quarrels  of  Jansenism,  once  more  a 
teacher  and  oracle,  already  the  great  role  was  his. 
But,  all  of  a  sudden,  misfortunes  fell.  The  Duchesse 
de  Bourgogne  died  on  the  12th  of  February,  1712; 
the  Due  de  Bourgogne  followed  her  on  the  i8th,  at 
twenty-nine  years  of  age,  and  all  the  hopes,  all  the 
prospects — shall  I  dare  to  say  ail  the  secret  ambitions? 
— of  the  prelate  vanished.  We  find  traces  of  his  pro- 
found grief  in  his  correspondence,  but  his  words  are 
simple,  true,  and  cast  far  from  him  all  censorious 
thought.  Learning  of  the  death  of  the  princess  he 
writes  to  Destouches  (February  i8th): 

"The  sad  news  that  has  come  to  us,  Monsieur,  from  where  you 
are,  takes  from  me  the  joy  that  was  the  soul  of  our  intercourse:  Qtiis 
desiderio  sit  pudor.  .  .  .  Truly  the  loss  is  very  great  for  the 
Court  and  for  the  kingdom.  They  say  a  thousand  good  things  of 
the  princess  and  increase  them  daily.  One  must  be  deeply  pained  for 
those  who  regret  her  with  such  just  sorrow.    You  see  how  frail  life  is! 


358  ifenclon. 

Four  days,  and  those  not  sure !  Each  man  thinks  he  is  secure,  as  if  he 
were  immortal;  the  world  is  but  a  mob  of  living,  feeble,  phantom 
beings,  about  to  rot;  the  most  dazzling  fortune  is  but  a  flattering 
dream." 


Those  are  not  the  grand  tones,  the  strong  beating 
wings  of  Bossuet  in  his  pulpit,  crying  out:  "Madame 
is  dying!  Madame  is  dead!  "  But  with  less  lightning, 
less  thunder,  Fenelon's  words  are  not  less  eloquent, 
and  quite  as  piercing. 

On  learning  of  the  death  of  the  Due  de  Bourgogne, 
Fenelon  writes  but  one  sentence;  it  is  brief,  deep-felt, 
and  all  it  should  be:  "1  suffer,  God  knows;  but  I  have 
not  fallen  ill,  and  that  is  much  for  me.  Your  heart, 
which  feels  for  mine,  comforts  me.  1  should  be  dis- 
tressed to  see  you  here;  take  care  of  your  own  bad 
health;  it  seems  to  me  that  all  I  love  is  about  to  die." 
To  write  thus  to  the  Chevalier  Destouches  in  such  a 
sorrow  was  to  place  him  very  high. 

The  rebound  of  the  world's  favours  after  this  cruel 
death  was  quickly  felt  by  Fenelon.  The  night  before, 
he  was  the  man  of  the  coming  reign,  the  centre  of  all 
future  hopes;  on  the  morrow  he  was  nothing,  his 
dream  had  crumbled  away,  and  if  he  could  forget 
it  for  a  moment,  the  world  was  ever  there  to  remind 
him.  A  man  of  importance,  a  friend  of  Destouches, 
had  offered  his  daughter  to  Fenelon's  nephew;  the  day 
after  the  death  of  the  Due  de  Bourgogne  this  man 
withdrew  his  promise.  Fenelon  was  not  surprised; 
nor  did  he  blame  the  father's  attention  to  the  solid 


ifenelon.  359 

establishment  of  his  daughter;  he  even  praises  and 
thanks  him  for  the  promptitude  of  his  action: 

"  As  for  your  friend,"  he  writes  to  Destouches,  "  1  entreat  you  not 
to  be  angry  with  him  for  this  change;  at  most  his  blame  is  to  have 
hoped  too  much  from  a  frail  and  uncertain  support;  it  is  on  such  frail 
hopes  that  the  worldly  wise  are  too  accustomed  to  fasten  certain 
projects.  Whoso  will  not  forgive  others  for  such  things  would  become 
a  misanthrope:  we  should  avoid  such  perils  in  our  own  lives,  and  for- 
give them  in  our  neighbours." 

Admirable  and  serene,  or,  at  least,  tranquil  in  mind, 
Fenelon  knows  the  world  and  mankind  to  their 
depths;  he  has  no  illusions  about  them.  But  he 
is  not  a  misanthrope,  and  had  he  ever  become  one, 
it  would  have  been  in  a  manner  that  resembled  no 
other: 

"I  am  very  glad,  my  dear,  good  man,"  he  writes  to  Destouches,  "that 
you  are  pleased  with  one  of  my  letters  that  they  have  read  to  you. 
You  are  right  in  saying  and  thinking  that  I  ask  little  of  nearly  all  men; 
I  try  to  give  them  much,  and  to  expect  nothing.  1  find  I  am  the  bet- 
ter for  this  bargain;  with  this  condition,  1  defy  them  to  deceive  me. 
There  is  a  very  small  number  of  true  friends  on  whom  I  rely,  not  from 
self-interest,  but  from  pure  esteem;  not  wishing  to  obtain  something 
from  them,  but  to  do  them  justice  in  not  distrusting  their  hearts.  1 
should  like  to  serve  the  whole  human  race,  and,  above  all,  good  men; 
but  there  is  scarcely  any  one  to  whom  I  am  willing  to  be  under  obli- 
gation. Is  it  from  haughtiness  and  pride  that  1  say  this?  Nothing 
could  be  sillier  or  more  out  of  place.  But  1  have  learned,  in  growing 
old,  to  know  men,  and  I  believe  that  it  is  best  to  do  without  them, 
without  letting  it  be  known."  "I  pity  men,"  he  says  elsewhere, 
"though  they  are  seldom  good." 

This  rarity  of  good  men,  which  seems  to  him  "the 
shame  of  the  human  race,"  brought  him  to  stronger 
love  for  his  chosen  friends:  "Comparison  only  makes 


36o  jpenelon, 

us  feel  the  more  the  value  of  true,  sweet,  safe,  reason- 
able persons,  open  to  friendship  and  above  self-inter- 
ests." Once  only  do  we  find  him  showing  any 
inquiring  interest  in  others,  and  then  it  is  for  Prince 
Eugene,  in  whom  he  thinks  he  perceives  a  truly  great 
man.  He  owns  that  he  would  like  to  know  him  and 
observe  him: 

"  His  actions  in  war  are  grand,  but  whiat  I  esteem  most  in  him  are 
qualities  in  which  what  is  called  fortune  has  no  part.  They  tell  me 
he  is  true,  without  ostentation,  without  haughtiness,  ready  to  listen 
without  prejudice,  and  to  answer  in  precise  terms.  He  goes  apart  by 
himself  at  times  to  read;  he  values  merit;  he  adapts  himself  to  all  na- 
tions; he  inspires  confidence.  That  is  the  man  you  are  about  to  see. 
1  wish  I  could  see  him,  too,  in  our  Low  Countries;  I  own  I  have  a 
curiosity  about  him,  though  I  have  little  left  for  the  human  race." 

The  death  of  the  Due  de  Beauvilliers,  in  171 4,  broke 
the  last  tie  that  bound  Fenelon  to  the  future:  "True 
friends,"  he  wrote  to  Destouches  on  this  occasion, 
"make  all  the  sweetness  and  all  the  bitterness  of 
life."  In  these  new  Letters  we  find  a  few  other  de- 
tails on  the  last  year  of  Fenelon's  life  (1714)-  The 
peace  just  signed  imposed  fresh  duties  upon  him. 

"  That  which  ends  your  work,"  he  writes  to  Destouches,  "begins 
mine;  peace  gives  you  the  freedom  it  takes  from  me;  1  have  seven 
hundred  and  sixty-four  villages  to  visit.  You  will  not  be  surprised 
that  I  wish  to  do  my  duty — you  whom  I  have  seen  so  scrupulous 
in  doing  yours,  in  spite  of  your  wound  and  your  infirmities." 

Six  weeks  before  his  death,  during  one  of  his 
pastoral  visitations,  his  carriage  was  overturned  and 
he  came  near  being  killed;  he  relates  the  incident 
very  pleasantly: 


jfenelon.  361 

"  A  rather  long  absence  has  delayed  the  answers  I  owe  you.  It  is 
true,  dear  man,  that  1  was  in  great  danger  of  losing  my  life,  and  I  do 
not  now  see  how  1  escaped;  never  was  any  one  so  willing  to  lose  three 
horses.  My  servants  called  out:  '  All  is  lost!  save  yourself!  '  I  did 
not  hear  them,  for  the  windows  were  up.  I  was  reading  a  book,  with 
my  spectacles  on  my  nose  and  a  pencil  in  my  hand;  my  legs  were  in  a 
bearskin  bag,  about  as  Archimedes  was  when  he  perished  at  the  siege 
of  Syracuse.  The  comparison  is  conceited,  but  the  accident  was 
frightful." 

He  gives  the  details.  A  mill-wheel  started  to  turn 
as  the  carriage  was  on  a  bridge  without  parapets;  one 
of  the  horses  was  frightened  and  sprang  off,  and  the 
rest  followed. 

Until  the  last,  in  spite  of  his  inward  sadness,  and 
though  his  heart  was  ever  sick  after  the  death  of  his 
cherished  pupil,  Fenelon  could  smile,  and  without  too 
much  effort.  He  had  by  nature  that  light-hearted 
gaiety,  which  is  not  either  volatile  or  false;  in  him  it 
was  the  natural  impulse  of  a  chaste,  equable,  and 
temperate  mind;  he  had  that  joy  of  which  (as  he  says 
so  well)  "frugality,  health,  and  innocence  are  the 
source."  In  his  last  lettef  he  jokes  Destouches  on  the 
"  pretty  repasts  "  to  which  the  chevalier  was  given,  at 
the  risk  of  being  forced  to  repent.  "  It  is  at  Cambrai," 
he  says,  "that  people  are  sober,  healthy,  light-hearted, 
content,  and  gay  under  rules."  In  reading  this  fa- 
miliar correspondence,  I  am  made  to  find  once  more 
in  the  whole  of  Fenelon  something  gay,  quick,  lively, 
slow,  easy,  insinuating,  and  magnetic  [enchanteur]. 

Among  the  pleasantries  to  be  found  there,  are  some 
that  relate  to  the  quarrel  between  the  Ancients  and 


362  ifenelom 

the  Moderns,  which  was  then  at  its  height  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Academy,  growing  more  and  more 
vehement  when  peace  was  signed  in  Europe.  La 
Motte,  a  friend  of  Destouches,  had  translated  and 
travestied  the  Iliad  of  Homer,  and  he  sent  it  to 
Fenelon,  asking  his  opinion.  Fenelon  was  here  rather 
weak.  Invoked  as  judge  and  arbiter  by  both  sides, 
he  evaded  the  subject.  He  thought  that  in  matters 
that  did  not  concern  the  safety  of  the  State  people 
might,  perhaps,  be  more  accommodating  than  in 
others,  and  more  inclined  to  politeness.  He  an- 
swered La  Motte  with  compliments  and  praises,  but 
did  not  commit  himself  on  the  real  point;  he  got  out 
of  it  by  quoting  a  line  of  Virgil,  which  leaves  the  vic- 
tory undecided  between  two  shepherds:  Et  vitula  tu 
dignas,  et  hie.  ...  It  was  Fenelon,  the  trans- 
lator, the  continuator  of  the  Odyssey,  the  father  of 
Telemaque,  who  could  talk  thus.  How  is  it  possible 
to  push  tolerance  to  such  a  point!  Evidently,  Fene- 
lon had  not  that  irritability  of  good  sense  and  reason 
that  forces  a  man  to  say  "  No !  "  with  vehemence ;  that 
prompt  and  honest  faculty,  a  little  brusque  it  may 
be,  that  Boileau  brought  to  literature,  and  Bossuet  to 
theology.     In  this  we  again  find  a  feeble  side. 

Each  man  has  his  glory  and  his  shadows.  We 
may  find  Fenelon  in  fault  on  certain  points.  Bossuet, 
in  theology,  pushed  him  hard.  I  find  him  equally  re- 
futed and  forcibly  reprimanded  in  connection  with  his 
Dialogues  sur  V Eloquence  and  certain  of  his  assertions 


ifenelon,  363 

about  ancient  authors,  by  Gibert,  a  well-informed 
man,  with  a  vigorous  and  in  no  way  despicable  mind. 
But  of  what  importance  to-day  are  such  mistakes  and 
inaccuracies  ?  Fenelon  had  the  spirit  of  piety,  and 
also  the  spirit  of  antiquity.  In  himself  he  unites  the 
two  spirits;  or,  rather,  he  possesses  and  contains  them, 
each  in  its  own  sphere,  without  contention,  without 
struggle,  without  discordance  of  any  kind;  and  that 
is  a  great  charm.  For  him,  the  battle  between  Christ- 
ianity and  Greece  did  not  exist,  and  Telemaque  is  the 
unique  monument  to  this  fortunate  and  well-nigh  im- 
possible harmony. 

Telemaque  is  not  the  pure  antique.  The  pure  an- 
tique to-day  would  be  more  or  less  imitation  and 
pastiche.  We  have  had  striking  instances  of  the  an- 
tique studied  and  made  over  with  passion  and  know- 
ledge. Telemaque  is  another  thing;  something  far 
more  naif  and  original  even  in  its  imitation.  It  is  the 
antique  laid  hold  of  naturally  and  without  effort  by  a 
modern  genius,  a  Christian  heart,  which,  fed  on  the 
speech  of  Homer,  recalls  it  freely  and  draws  from  it 
as  from  a  spring,  but  remakes  and  transforms  it  un- 
consciously while  in  the  act  of  remembering  it.  This 
beauty  thus  turned  aside,  softened,  not  impaired, 
glides  a  full  stream  in  Fenelon's  channel,  overflowing 
into  a  fountain  always  playing,  always  sacred,  which 
adapts  itself  easily  to  its  new  slopes  and  its  new 
shores.  To  appreciate  Telemaque  as  it  should  be, 
there  is  but  one  thing  to  do :  forget,  if  you  can,  that 


364  Jfenelon. 

you  read  it  in  childhood.  I  had  that  happiness  a  year 
ago;  I  had,  as  it  were,  forgotten  Telemaque,  and  1 
was  able  to  read  it  again  with  the  freshness  of 
novelty. 

From  the  literary  point  of  view,  many  have  greatly 
praised  and  striven  to  define  Fenelon,  but  nowhere 
has  it  been  done,  as  I  think,  with  a  happier  expression 
of  feeling  and  a  more  touching  resemblance  than  in 
the  following  passage,  which  relates  to  his  eloquence 
as  much  as  to  his  person:  "What  he  made  people 
feel  were  not  transports,  but  a  succession  of  peaceable 
and  ineffable  feelings:  there  was  in  his  discourse  I 
know  not  what  tranquil  harmony,  I  know  not  what 
sweet  slowness,  I  know  not  what  long,  lingering 
graces  that  no  expression  can  render."  It  is  a  Choc- 
taw who  says  that  in  "The  Natchez."  It  is  strange 
to  meet  with  such  a  speech  in  the  mouth  of  an  Ameri- 
can savage,  but  it  is  not  less  beautiful  and  perfect  and 
worthy  to  be  inscribed  at  the  close  of  Fenelon's  own 
pages. 

Fenelon  was,  above  all  else,  a  perfect  and  supreme 
director  of  consciences.  I  go  at  once  to  the  objection 
that  can  be  made  to  this  statement.  As  such,  as  ar- 
bitrator of  souls,  he  had  his  errors,  he  went  astray,  he 
yielded  too  completely  to  his  tastes  and  predilections. 
There  was  in  his  life  a  critical  moment,  when  the  in- 
clination and  the  particular  vocation  that  he  felt  for  in- 
ward direction  and  for  the  delicate  mysteries  of  piety 
misled  and  slightly  intoxicated  him.     Meeting  in  Mme. 


jfeneion.  365 

Guyon  a  tender  and  subtile  soul,  who  apparently  re- 
vived all  the  traditions  of  the  most  saintly  and  the 
most  admitted  fervours,  he  forgot  himself  too  much 
in  speculating  with  her  and  in  vying  with  her  in 
research  and  relinquishment.  Let  us  pass  a  sponge 
over  that  moment  of  illusion  and  forgetfulness,  in 
which,  moreover,  we  cannot  take  a  single  step  with- 
out obscurity  and  bewilderment.  It  is  not  for  us,  and 
this  is  not  the  place,  to  enter  into  elucidations  of  what 
they  called  "the  different  degrees  of  Prayer"  [les 
divers  degres  d' Oratson];  we  can  only  remain  upon 
the  threshold,  and  with  difficulty  there.  1  shall  there- 
fore take  Fenelon  wholly  outside  of  that  affair  of 
Quietism,  and  simply  as  a  most  delicate,  most  per- 
ceptive, most  adaptable  and  acceptable  guide  that 
many  anxious  souls  consulted  and  some  devoted 
friends. 

The  Lettres  Spirituelles  bear  specially  on  these  points 
of  the  inward  life,  and  by  them  he  teaches  how  to 
make  true  progress  in  the  "art  of  loving  God."  This 
volume,  well  known  and  valued  as  it  is,  is  not  the 
one  that  I  chiefly  recommend  to  people  of  the  world, 
nor  is  it  the  one  that  1  prefer.  It  is  too  exclusively  a 
collection  of  inward  matters,  leaving  out  all  that  re- 
lates to  events,  persons,  and  society;  all,  in  short, 
that  would  give  it  reality.  The  best  way,  as  I  think, 
to  read  the  Lettres  Spirituelles  of  Fenelon,  when  it 
is  desired  to  make  a  slow  and  just  use  of  them,  is 
to  read  them  in  connection  with  the  edition  of  the 


366  jf^nelon. 

Correspondance  in  eleven  volumes.  There  we  find 
the  names,  dates,  events,  and  all  the  circumstances 
that  make  the  matter  living. 

For  example,  we  know  the  Comtesse  de  Gram- 
mont;  she  was  a  Hamilton,  sister  of  the  spicy  and  satiri- 
cal writer,  Antoine  Hamilton,  and  wife  of  the  Comte 
de  Grammont,  so  well  known  for  his  Memoirs,  writ- 
ten down  for  him  by  his  brother-in-law.  Brought 
very  young  to  France  by  her  parents  during  the  civil 
wars  in  England,  she  was  educated  at  Port-Royal;  for 
which  she  always  preserved  an  attachment.  Return- 
ing later  to  France  as  Comtesse  de  Grammont,  the 
most  noted  woman  at  Court,  haughty,  brilliant,  of 
easy  virtue,  but  respected  and  esteemed  through  all 
her  dissipations,  she  retained,  when  growing  old,  the 
remains  of  beauty,  and  made  herself  acceptable  at  all 
times  to  Louis  XIV,  to  the  point  of  giving  umbrage 
now  and  then  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  Saint-Simon 
and  Mme.  de  Caylus  tell  us  all  this,  and  do  not  leave 
us  ignorant  of  the  vagaries  of  temper  and  character 
that  made  her  a  person  even  more  interesting  than 
amiable.  Well,  the  Comtesse  de  Grammont  is  one  of 
the  spiritual  correspondents  of  Fenelon;  not  precisely 
one  of  his  penitents,  although  he  seems  to  have  been 
the  person  who  contributed  most  to  bring  her  back 
and  fix  her  to  ideas  of  religion;  and  it  was  not  until 
Fenelon  was  in  exile  at  Cambrai  that  the  countess  re- 
turned to  her  former  ways  at  Port-Royal  and  declared 
herself  openly  on  that  side.     Until  then,  and  so  long 


3Fenelon.  367 

as  Fenelon  was  within  reach,  she  kept  a  middle 
course. 

It  was  towards  the  age  of  forty-five  that  the  Com- 
tesse  de  Grammont  began  to  change  her  ways,  and 
to  think  of  regulating  her  life.     She  had  much  to  do: 

"  You  have  a  great  deal  to  fear  both  within  and  without,"  wrote 
Fenelon.  "  Without,  the  world  smiles  upon  you;  and  the  part  of  the 
world  that  is  most  capable  of  feeding  pride  gives  yours  all  that  can 
gratify  it  in  the  marks  of  consideration  you  receive  at  Court.  Within, 
you  have  to  surmount  a  taste  for  a  refined  and  dainty  life,  a  spirit 
haughty  and  disdainful,  and  a  long  habit  of  dissipation.  All  that, 
taken  together,  is  a  torrent  that  will  sweep  away  even  the  best  reso- 
lutions." 

He  advises  her,  as  a  true  remedy,  to  save,  each  day, 
some  hours  for  prayer  and  reading;  but  were  it  only 
half  an  hour,  he  says,  in  the  morning;  and  half  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  taken  from  excitements  and  well 
managed  would  still  be  good.  "It  is  in  such  mo- 
ment's that  we  renew  ourselves  before  God,  and  repair 
in  haste  the  breaches  the  world  has  made." 

Silence,  above  all,  seems  to  him  a  great  remedy, 
and  the  only  one  in  the  moments  thus  snatched  from 
the  world.  Imagine  the  sister  of  Hamilton,  like  him 
in  mind,  in  satirical  charms,  in  subtile,  imperceptible, 
elegant,  pitiless,  and  vengeful  irony  — imagine  her 
cutting  off  all  that  and  leaving  to  others  the  honours  of 
conversation!  "  You  cannot  conquer  your  disdainful, 
mocking,  haughty  spirit  except  in  holding  it  chained 
by  silence.  .  .  .  You  cannot  fast  too  rigidly  from 
the   pleasures   of  worldly   conversation.     You   must 


368  3fenelon» 

humble  yourself  incessantly;  you  will  rise  again  only 
too  soon."  He  knows  the  spot  he  touches,  and  he 
returns  to  it  repeatedly:  "Preserve  inward  meditation 
even  in  conversation;  you  have  more  need  than  others 
of  this  antidote."  But  this  silence  to  which  she  is 
required  to  condemn  herself  must  not  be  a  "cold  and 
disdainful  silence  ";  for  self-love  driven  back  has  many 
byways  of  return;  "it  must,  on  the  contrary,  be  a 
silence  of  deference  to  others."  Thus  does  Fenelon, 
on  every  tone  and  with  infinite  skill,  endeavour  to 
instil  charity  for  one's  neighbour  into  the  sister  of 
Hamilton. 

But  he  sees  another  rock,  another  peril  within  her: 
"  You  have  more  need  to  be  humiliated,"  he  tells  her, 
"than  to  receive  more  light."  These  lights  of  re- 
ligion, as  he  very  well  knows,  the  countess  received 
from  childhood  at  Port-Royal;  she  has  greater  need, 
in  turning  from  the  world  to  religion,  to  learn  not  to 
pass  from  one  self-love  to  another,  not  to  seek  to 
excel  or  to  be  a  marvel  in  a  new  sense: 

"  What  I  desire  for  you  is  smallness  and  simplicity  of  mind.  I  fear 
for  you  a  luminous  and  lofty  devotion,  which,  under  pretext  of  seeking 
the  real  and  lasting  thing  in  reading  and  in  practice,  nourishes  in  secret 
I  know  not  what  of  grandeur  that  is  contrary  to  the  child  Christ  Jesus, 
simple  and  despised  of  the  sages  of  the  century.  We  must  be  a  child 
with  him.  I  pray  him  with  all  my  heart,  madame,  to  take  from  you 
not  only  your  defects,  but  also  your  taste  for  grandeur  in  virtue,  and 
to  humble  you  by  grace." 

There  is  nothing  in  these  letters  of  Fenelon  to  Mme. 
de  Grammont,  that  exceeds  what  the  delicate  good 


jfenelon.  369 

sense  of  the  most  enlightened  director  of  consciences 
should  counsel  and  prescribe. 

Some  of  the  letters  addressed  to  her  do,  however, 
go  much  farther  and  develop  the  important  and  al- 
ways intelligible  points  of  Fenelon's  doctrine  of  piety. 
The  Stoics,  Epictetus,  for  instance,  lay  it  down  as  a 
principle  that  to  be  happy  and  virtuous  we  must 
withdraw  ourselves  within  ourselves  and  within  the 
bounds  of  all  external  things  that  depend  upon  us; 
cutting  off  whatever  is  without,  raising  the  draw- 
bridge, as  it  were,  so  that  all  communication  be 
merely  formal,  and  not  affect  uses  sentially.  Fenelon, 
like  all  true  Christians,  found  that  way  of  attaining  to 
virtue  and  happiness  very  gloomy  and  insufficient; 
it  is  not  in  seeking  solitude,  in  withdrawing  within 
self,  that  he  thinks  it  possible  to  find  peace;  for  in  us, 
in  our  nature,  is  the  root  of  all  our  ills;  so  long  as  we 
remain  selfishly  shut  up  within  ourselves  we  are  ex- 
posed to  all  painful  and  sorrowful  impressions: 

"  Our  temper  exposes  us  to  that  of  others;  our  passions  clash  with 
those  of  our  neighbours;  our  desires  are  just  so  many  points  at  which 
we  lay  ourselves  open  to  the  darts  of  other  men ;  our  pride,  which  is 
incompatible  with  the  pride  of  our  neighbour,  rises  like  the  waves  of  an 
angry  sea;  all  fight  us,  all  attack  us,  we  are  exposed  on  all  sides  by  the 
sensitiveness  of  our  passions  and  the  jealousy  of  our  pride." 

The  remedy,  to  his  mind,  is  to  find  peace  by  com- 
ing out  of  self;  to  rise  by  prayer,  and  lose  that  self  as 
much  as  possible  in  thoughts  of  the  infinite  Being,  the 
fatherly  Being,  loving  and  good,  and  always  present; 

VOL.   II.— 24. 


370  ifenclon. 

to  obtain,  if  possible,  that  his  will  be  substituted  for 
ours:  "Then  shall  we  know  the  true  peace  reserved 
for  men  of  right  will  .  .  .  ;  then  can  men  do 
naught  against  us,  for  they  cannot  touch  us  through 
our  desires  nor  through  our  fears;  then  shall  we  will 
all  and  will  nothing.  This  is  to  be  inaccessible  to 
enemies,  to  become  invulnerable."  That  in  the  doc- 
trines of  the  later  Stoics,  and  even  in  Epictetus  and 
Marcus  Aurelius,  there  was  a  beginning  of  this  method 
of  conceiving  the  enfranchisement  of  the  spirit,  I  do 
not  deny;  but  such  thoughts  did  not  have  their  full 
illumination  and  accomplishment  until  Christ  brought 
into  the  world  the  idea  of  God  that  he  came  to  reveal. 
The  doctrine  of  Fenelon,  freed  from  certain  refine- 
ments of  expression  and  over-niceties  peculiar  to  his 
manner  of  feeling  and  writing,  is  no  other  than  the 
Christian  doctrine  in  its  most  spiritual  vigour. 

In  his  correspondence  with  Mme.  de  Montberon  he 
thinks  he  is,  or  says  he  is,  sometimes  cold  and  uncer- 
tain: on  the  contrary,  he  enters,  in  a  keen  and  rapid 
manner,  into  ail  the  delicacies  of  Divine  love;  he 
explains  in  clear,  prompt  terms  its  theory,  as  we 
should  say,  its  precepts;  he  makes  it  simple,  but  a 
simplicity  we  do  not  perceive  at  a  glance.  As  he 
has  to  do  with  a  soul  more  scrupulous,  more  subtile 
than  that  of  Mme.  de  Grammont,  he  goes  farther  and 
deeper  than  with  the  latter.  He  insists  upon  the 
rather  subtile  point  that,  in  prayer,  we  must  try  to 
hush  ourselves  to  let  the  spirit  of  God  speak  in  us: 


3fenelon»  371 

"There  is  no  longer  real  silence,"  he  says,  "when 
we  listen  to  ourselves.  After  having  listened,  we 
answer,  and  in  that  dialogue  a  secret  self-love  silences 
God,     Peace  for  you  is  in  a  very  delicate  simplicity." 

It  is  in  this  doctrine  of  silence  and  quietude  in 
prayer  that  we  find  the  germ  of  what  is  called  Quiet- 
ism, which  may  become  illusion.  I  say  no  more,  and 
pass  on  hastily.  In  general,  Fenelon's  "  delicate  sim- 
plicity "  is  not  that  from  which  we  start,  but  that  to 
which  we  return  by  force  of  mind,  of  art,  and  of 
taste.  I  will  not  try  now  to  investigate  and  define  it, 
having  still  to  show  its  more  serious  aspects.  .  .  . 
To-day  I  have  only  skimmed  my  subject;  but,  in  truth, 
these  matters  of  spirituality  cannot  be  given  in  great 
quantities  at  a  time.  It  remains  to  show  Fenelon 
on  his  firmer  and  stronger  sides,  in  his  correspond- 
ence, half  spiritual,  half  political,  with  the  Due  de 
Chevreuse  and  the  Due  de  Bourgogne — the  close  of 
the  reign  of  Louis  XIV  as  seen  from  Cambrai. 

Among  Fenelon's  letters  there  are  none  more  inter- 
esting and  more  instructive  than  those  he  wrote  to  the 
Due  de  Chevreuse.  It  was  through  him,  principally, 
that  Fenelon,  during  the  seventeen  years  of  his  exile 
at  Cambrai,  continued  to  correspond  with  his  pupil, 
the  Due  de  Bourgogne. 

The  Due  de  Chevreuse,  like  the  Comtesse  de  Gram- 
mont,  was  a  former  pupil  of  Port-Royal ;  but,  unlike 
the  countess,  he  did  not  preserve  an  affection  for  it. 
He  always,  however,  retained  some  effect  of  it  in  his 


372  if^nelon. 

mind,  his  method  of  reasoning,  close  and  logical,  and 
in  his  erudite,  polished,  and  pure  language.  It  was 
for  the  Due  de  Chevreuse,  when  a  child,  that  Arnauld 
composed  the  Logique,  called  that  of  Port-Royal.  The 
duke  did  not  profit  by  it  in  the  sense  and  spirit  that 
Arnauld  expected.  One  of  the  remarks  of  that  judi- 
cious "  Logic"  is,  that  the  greater  part  of  men's  errors 
come  less  because  they  reason  ill  on  true  principles 
than  because  they  reason  well  on  false  ones.  The 
Due  de  Chevreuse,  such  as  we  see  him  in  Saint-Simon 
and  in  his  correspondence  with  Fenelon,  appears  to 
us  precisely  a  type  of  the  men  who  reason  wonder- 
fully, reason  too  well,  reason  on  everything,  and  ad 
infinitum,  only  the  principle  from  which  they  start  is 
false  and  contestable. 

"One  was  lost,"  says  Saint-Simon,  "if  one  did  not  stop  him 
in  the  beginning;  because  as  soon  as  he  had  been  allowed  to  pass 
two  or  three  propositions  which  seemed  simple,  and  which  he  made  to 
result  from  one  another,  he  led  his  man  by  beat  of  drum  and  colours 
flying  to  his  end.  People  felt  he  was  wrong,  but  he  reasoned  so 
closely  that  there  was  no  finding  a  joint  at  which  to  break  the 
chain  " 

The  Due  de  Chevreuse,  honest,  sedulous,  laborious, 
treating  all  questions  methodically,  exhausting  him- 
self in  combining  facts  and  drawing  inductions  and 
conclusions  for  ever,  had  something  in  him  of  the  doc- 
trinaire and  the  statistician  combined  (we  still  have 
some  of  the  kind) :  with  much  intellect,  worth,  ca- 
pacity, and  knowledge,  he  never  came  to  be  more 
than  a  good,  wrong  mind  \hon  esprit  faux].     It  was 


3fcnelon»  373 

certainly  not  worth  while  to  write  the  most  simple 
and  sensible  of  Logiques  expressly  for  him,  and  attain, 
in  his  person,  such  results. 

Fenelon  did  his  best  to  correct  the  Due  de  Chev- 
reuse  in  his  intellectual  excesses  and  to  cure  him  of 
them: 

"I  always  fear,"  he  writes  to  him  in  1695,  "  your  excessive  tend- 
ency to  reason;  it  is  an  obstacle  to  the  silence  and  inward  composure 
in  which  God  communicates  himself.  Let  us  be  simple,  humble,  sin- 
cerely detached  from  men;  let  us  be  calm,  meditative,  not  arguers 
with  God.  The  men  you  used  formerly  to  listen  to  are  dry,  cold, 
critical  reasoners,  opposed  to  the  true  inward  life.  However  little  you 
listen  to  them,  you  will  always  hear  endless  arguments  and  dangerous 
inquiries  which  will  put  you  insensibly  away  from  grace,  and  cast  you 
back  into  your  natural  self." 

It  was,  in  truth,  the  whole  nature  of  the  Due  de  Chev- 
reuse  that  he  was  trying  to  remake  from  head  to  foot; 
Fenelon's  counsels  are  given  in  lively  and  personal 
terms,  which  now  serve  as  features  for  a  faithful  por- 
trait of  the  good  duke.  "\  have  often  remarked  that 
you  are  always  in  a  hurry  to  go  from  one  occupation 
to  another,  but  that,  nevertheless,  each  of  them  leads 
you  too  far.  You  follow  your  spirit  of  anatomy  into 
everything.  You  are  not  slow,  but  you  are  long." 
And  again :  ' '  You  are  too  accustomed  to  let  your  mind 
plod."  To  the  Comtesse  de  Grammont,  satirical  and 
pungent,  he  counsels  "fasting  from  worldly  con- 
versation"; to  the  Due  de  Chevreuse,  absorbed  in  his 
speculations,  he  counsels  "fasting  from  ratiocination": 
"When  you  cease  to  reason  you  will  die  to  self,  for 


374  Ifenelon. 

reasoning  is  the  whole  of  your  life.  .  .  .  The  more 
you  reason  the  more  you  give  food  to  your  philosophic 
life.  Yield  yourself  up  to  simplicity  and  to  the  mania 
of  the  Cross." 

The  Due  de  Bourgogne  holds  naturally  a  large 
place,  the  largest  place,  in  Fenelon's  Correspondence 
during  these  years,  and  it  is  to  us  the  most  interesting 
part  of  it;  it  is  like  a  semi-poetic  and  romantic  light 
suddenly  thrown  for  our  benefit  upon  history.  Young 
princes,  the  objects  of  so  many  prayers  and  hopes, 
who  never  lived  to  fulfil  them,  those  to  whom  the 
voice  of  peoples,  like  the  voice  of  the  poet,  has  said: 
"if  'tis  given  thee  to  vanquish  the  inimical  Fates, 
thou  shalt  be  Marcellus  " — these  incompleted  figures 
that  imagination  often  crowns,  present,  as  they  flit  by, 
a  problem  that  the  most  serious  and  least  visionary 
minds  may  well  meditate  upon,  at  least  for  a  moment. 
It  is  thus  with  the  Due  de  Bourgogne;  we  cannot,  as 
we  cross  these  last  years  of  Louis  XIV,  meet  the 
original,  singular,  and  puzzling  figure  of  Fenelon's 
pupil  without  asking  ourselves:  "  What  wholly  differ- 
ent results  would  have  come  in  history,  what  turn 
would  things  have  taken  for  France,  had  he  lived  ?" 

1  shall  say  at  once  that  the  idea  of  the  Due  de  Bour- 
gogne which  we  obtain  in  reading  Fenelon  is  not  ex- 
actly the  same  as  that  which  is  given  by  Saint-Simon. 
And  here  is  a  singular  thing:  we  get  from  Saint-Si- 
mon a  stronger  and  more  favourable  impression  of 
the  Due  de  Bourgogne  than  we  do  from    Fenelon. 


jfenelon.  375 

Whether  it  was  that  the  latter,  in  his  distant  exile,  did 
not  fully  know  the  good  qualities  tardily  developed  in 
the  young  prince,  the  superior  merits  praised  so  highly 
in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  or  whether  Fenelon  was 
too  disposed  to  judge  him  always  as  a  child,  towards 
whom,  as  former  master  and  tutor,  he  was  bound  to 
be  more  severe  and  exacting  than  he  would  be  to 
others,  it  is  certain  that  Fenelon's  letters  are  continu- 
ally filled  with  censure,  most  distinctly  pronounced, 
except  in  those  of  the  last  eight  months  of  the  prince's 
life. 

What  Fenelon  wrote  to  the  Due  de  Bourgogne  he 
never  ceased  to  repeat  to  him  through  the  channel  of 
the  Due  de  Chevreuse;  he  is  hurt  in  his  religion  as 
an  enlightened  Christian,  in  his  tenderness  as  foster- 
father,  in  his  patriotism  as  a  citizen,  to  see  a  prince 
who  ought  to  be  so  dear  to  all  good  Frenchmen 
becoming,  as  he  thinks,  an  object  of  contempt  and 
general  exasperation.  Fenelon's  letters  of  this  date 
throw  a  melancholy  light  on  the  decadence  of  public 
spirit,  and  the  deterioration  of  characters  and  social 
morality.  The  young  and  rising  generation,  full  of 
new  desires,  enduring  impatiently  the  long  reign  and 
the  mute  subjection  imposed  by  Louis  XIV,  ought,  it 
seemed,  to  turn  with  favour  to  an  heir  more  or  less 
like  themselves,  who  already  announced  such  con- 
trary maxims.  Far  from  it:  in  place  of  that  favour 
they  showed  only  dislike  against  the  future  king,  be- 
cause they  knew  him  to  be  virtuous  and  religious. 


376  ifenelon. 

Vice  and  debauchery,  muzzled  at  the  close  of  Louis 
XIV's  reign,  feared  to  be  still  more  so,  and  in  another 
manner,  under  his  grandson.  Nevertheless,  as  much 
heedless  want  of  reflection,  much  mere  vogue  and 
fashion,  were,  after  our  French  custom,  mingled  with 
all  this,  it  came  to  pass  that  during  the  last  year, 
when  the  Due  de  Bourgogne,  then  become  dauphin 
by  the  death  of  his  father,  put  himself,  with  little 
effort,  into  an  attitude  of  pleasing  and  of  winning 
good  will,  public  opinion  suddenly  veered  round  to 
honour  him  and  extol  his  transformation,  so  that 
when  he  died,  a  few  months  later,  the  loss  was 
mourned  as  irreparable,  as  that  of  a  blessing  torn 
from  the  human  race. 

Saint-Simon  shows  us,  visibly,  the  whole  of  this 
movement,  the  flux  and  reflux,  in  which  he  swims 
himself,  and  which  is  much  less  felt  in  the  calmer  and 
by  no  means  enthusiastic  Correspondence  of  Fenelon. 
During  the  whole  year  of  17 lo,  and  in  the  beginning 
of  171 1,  he  never  ceases,  when  touching  that  delicate 
chord,  to  make  it  ring  the  one  sound:  sustain,  correct, 
enlarge  the  heart  of  the  young  prince;  he  desires,  and 
demands  of  Heaven  for  him,  "a  heart  as  wide  as 
Ocean."  It  is  necessary  that  from  that  moment  he 
should  practise  his  royal  role  "by  correcting  himself, 
by  taking  much  upon  him,  by  adapting  himself  to 
men  in  order  to  know  them,  to  manage  them,  and 
learn  how  to  put  them  to  work."  In  vain  is  he  told 
good  things  of  the  prince,   he  will  not  be  satisfied 


tendon.  377 

"until  he  knows  him  free,  firm,  in  possession  of  the 
power  of  speaking  (even  to  the  king)  with  gentle  and 
respectful  force.  .  .  .  If  he  does  not  feel  the  need 
of  becoming  firm  and  vigorous,  he  will  never  make 
any  true  progress;  it  is  time  now  to  be  a  man." 

Fenelon,  who  has  been  accused,  and  with  reason, 
of  being  sometimes  visionary,  and  who  had  a  corner 
of  poesy  and  idealism  in  his  nature  which,  in  his  youth 
at  least,  he  liked  to  transport  into  human  things, 
guards  himself  from  this  tendency  when  he  judges 
and  exhorts  the  Due  de  Bourgogne.  He  feels,  with 
all  his  mind  and  all  his  nobility  of  nature,  what  are 
the  qualities  necessary  for  a  king,  for  the  head  of  a 
nation,  for  one  of  the  masters  of  the  world.  He  de- 
sires, therefore,  to  inspire  his  pupil  with  boldness  of 
action,  nobleness  in  his  behaviour  and  bearing;  the 
art  of  conversation,  of  all  that  adorns,  imposes,  and 
gives  to  power  its  gentleness  and  majesty.  "  Let  him 
be  small  and  ever  smaller  under  the  hand  of  God,  but 
great  and  grand  to  the  eyes  of  men.  It  is  for  him  to 
make  virtue  joined  to  authority  loved,  feared,  and  re- 
spected. It  is  said  of  Solomon  that  men  feared  him, 
seeing  the  wisdom  that  was  in  him."  To  the  very  end 
he  distrusts  and  combats  in  his  pupil  what  was  in  the 
latter  an  inveterate  habit  until  he  was  twenty-eight 
years  of  age,  namely,  too  much  reasoning,  too  much 
speculation  as  opposed  to  action,  and  a  certain  petty 
and  trivial  compliance,  both  in  serious  matters  and  in 
his  recreations:  "  Puerile  amusements  lower  the  mind, 


378  jfe'nelon. 

weaken  the  heart,  degrade  the  man,  and  are  contrary 
to  God's  order."  Fenelon,  in  the  whole  of  this  moral 
appeal,  is  not  chary  of  his  expressions. 

In  all  that  I  have  said,  I  have  had  no  other  intention 
than  to  recall  certain  traits  of  the  noble,  lofty,  coura- 
geous piety,  both  social  and  royal,  of  Fenelon,  with- 
out presuming  to  draw  (which  would  be  cruel  and 
almost  impious  in  regard  to  him)  any  inference,  any 
consequence,  against  the  future  of  his  cherished  pupil, 
against  that  future  which  it  was  not  given  to  men  to 
know  or  to  see  develop.  The  Due  de  Bourgogne, 
disappearing  in  his  first  bloom,  remains  one  of  those 
confused  and  flattering  hopes  that  all  may  construe 
and  interpret  as  they  choose.  Have  we  not  seen 
Saint-Simon  admire  him  all  the  more  because  he  had, 
as  it  were,  grafted  upon  him  and  upon  his  future 
reign  his  own  whole  system  of  quasi-feudality  ? 

Fenelon  himself,  like  his  pupil,  was  a  hope;  he  ap- 
peared in  politics  as  one  of  those  floating  lights  that 
the  breeze  of  public  opinion  sends  vacillating  from 
one  side  to  the  other,  according  as  men  take  them  and 
welcome  them.  His  ideas  and  his  various  plans  de- 
mand a  long  explanation,  the  last  word  and  conclu- 
sion of  which  would  be,  as  I  think,  doubt.  That 
which  is  certain  is  that  the  true  Fenelon,  such  as  he 
shows  himself  in  this  correspondence,  and  in  his  last 
years,  is  not  precisely  the  Fenelon  whom  the  men  of 
the  eighteenth  century  —  Ramsay,  d'Alembert,  and 
others  —  have   successively   presented   to   the    public 


jfenelon.  379 

and  extolled.  The  Fenelon  who,  in  171 1,  seems  to 
desire  and  pray  for  an  Assembly  of  Notables,  but  who, 
at  the  same  time,  is  wholly  occupied  in  opposing 
Jansenism,  even  mitigated  Jansenism,  in  refuting  M. 
Habert,  in  making  an  excerpt  of  the  true  doctrine  of 
St.  Augustine:  the  Fenelon  who  declares  that  "the 
liberties  of  the  Galilean  Church  are  actual  slavery," 
who  fears  laic  power  far  more  than  spiritual  and  ultra- 
montane power,  and  who  dreads  the  danger  of  schism 
as  much  as  the  invasion  of  France — that  Fenelon  is 
certainly  not  the  one  whom  the  philosophers  of  the 
following  century  have  fashioned  and  remodelled  to 
suit  them. 

The  long  reign  of  Louis  XIV  had  strained  all  ener- 
gies and  wearied,  in  the  long  run,  all  conditions  of 
men  and  their  souls.  Towards  its  close,  and  in  spite 
of  conventional  laudations,  the  faults  of  that  regime 
were  felt  by  all  reflecting  minds,  and  struck  the  eyes 
of  all  who  knew  how  to  see.  And  who  would  see 
and  feel  them  more  keenly  than  Fenelon  ?  His  policy 
was,  above  all,  moral.  It  was  what  it  must  have 
been  in  a  man  of  sensitive  feeling,  piety,  and  delicacy, 
who  had  seen  the  Court  very  closely,  and  had  suffered 
from  it,  and  now,  at  the  end  of  a  long  reign,  watched 
its  disadvantages  and  ill  results,  its  last  abuses  and  its 
disasters.  In  his  exile,  and  notwithstanding  his  re- 
maining confidential  intercourse  with  the  Court,  he 
was  not  fully  informed  of  the  state  of  things ;  he  says 
himself,  constantly,  that  the  general  state  of  affairs 


380  ifenelon. 

has  not  been  explained  to  him,  and  he  is  right;  he 
judges  only  as  the  public  judged,  or,  as  he  says,  "by 
the  scraps  of  government  he  sees  on  his  frontier." 
But  even  so,  and  without  needing  further  information, 
all  men  of  sense,  honest  men,  the  Fenelons,  the  Vau- 
bans,  the  Catinats,  saw  the  defects,  and  sought,  each 
on  his  own  line,  remedies  in  counteraction  and  in  the 
reversal  of  that  which  was.  All  such  projects  of 
dismissed  and  exiled  men,  malcontents,  or  patriotic 
dreamers,  are  necessarily  vague  and  somewhat  chi- 
merical when  it  comes  to  applying  them.  But  there 
was  then  a  general  inspiration,  a  natural  breath,  as  it 
were,  diffusing  itself  through  all  classes  of  lofty  minds 
or  simply  human  minds,  sensible  and  gentle.  Each 
had  his  plan  of  correction  for  that  government  of 
Louis  XIV,  now  nearing  its  end.  Fenelon  was  merely 
the  man  most  in  sight;  the  most  popular  among  the 
many  makers  and  inventors  of  plans  and  programmes. 
He  never  gave  to  his  plans  and  programmes  a 
final  touch;  he  never  proposed  them  as  other  than 
first  ideas,  to  be  sifted  and  moulded  into  practice. 
His  great  innovation  was  to  think  and  to  say,  in 
face  of  the  monarchical  idolatry  of  Louis  XIV, 
that  "kings  are  made  for  subjects,  not  subjects  for 
kings."  By  inculcating  that  maxim  in  the  Due  de 
Bourgogne,  engraving  it,  as  it  were,  upon  his  heart, 
he  did  not  think  of  any  act  of  positive  reform,  still 
less  of  philosophy  and  democracy,  as  we  should  now 
say:    he  was  merely  going  back  to  the  religion  of 


ffenelon.  381 

Saint-Louis.  However  laudable  such  maxims  may 
be,  they  leave  out,  almost  entirely,  the  question  of 
public  policy,  properly  so-called.  A  policy  truly 
novel,  but  so  necessary  after  Louis  XIV,  required,  in 
order  to  succeed  in  its  application,  all  the  correctives 
and  all  the  precautions  which,  later,  were  lacking  — 
for  Louis  XVI  failed  solely  from  having  practised  faith- 
fully, but  without  art,  this  very  maxim  of  the  virtuous 
dauphin,  his  father,  and  of  the  Due  de  Bourgogne,  his 
grandfather. 

Fenelon  knew  men,  and  appears  not  to  have  relied 
much  upon  either  their  goodness  or  their  gratitude; 
he  says  so  in  more  than  one  place  to  the  Due  de  Bour- 
gogne, and  with  a  singularly  intense  accent,  showing 
that  he  had  no  illusions  on  that  point:  "When  a  man 
is  destined  to  govern  men,  he  must  love  them  for  the 
love  of  God,  and  not  expect  to  be  loved  by  them.  .  .  ." 
I  refer  my  readers  to  that  whole  passage,  which  it  is 
painful  to  transcribe  in  its  ugly  truths.  There  are  mo- 
ments when  Fenelon's  experience  brings  him  very 
near  to  bitterness;  but  in  him  bitterness  stops  short 
and  soon  softens;  it  never  resembles  the  misanthropy 
of  others.  I  find  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Mme.  de  Mont- 
beron,  when  he  was  nearing  his  fiftieth  year,  a  very 
keen  and  circumstantial  painting  of  the  insipid,  arid, 
disillusioned  life  he  was  leading:  "As  for  me,  I  live  in 
cold  peace,  obscure  and  languishing,  without  ennui, 
without  pleasure,  without  thought  of  ever  having 
any;  without  prospect  of  any  future  in  this  world; 


382  ifenelon. 

amid  an  insipid  and  often  thorny  present.  .  .  ." 
Such  moments  of  aridity  and  disgust  in  Fenelon  are 
described  in  terms  which  show  that  his  weariness  of 
soul  did  not  resemble  a  vulgar  ennui. 

As  he  grew  older,  causes  for  sadness  increased;  he 
lost  all  his  friends.  The  short  year  during  which  the 
Due  de  Bourgogne  shone,  only  to  be  extinguished, 
passed  like  a  flash.  Fenelon,  courted  once  more  for 
several  months,  then  dropped  again  on  the  death  of 
the  duke,  had  full  opportunity  to  revive  his  ideas  of 
the  vanity  and  baseness  of  the  world.  Yet,  in  the 
midst  of  it,  his  delicate,  pure  nature,  blessed  with 
unction,  and  adorned  with  grace  divine,  recovers  it- 
self and  resumes  the  upper  hand.  I  find  a  letter  from 
him  on  the  death  of  his  best  friend,  the  Abbe  de 
Langeron:  it  is  sad,  it  is  charming,  it  is  light-hearted. 
Fenelon  believed  without  effort  in  all  that  is  spiritual 
within  us;  his  piety  had  wings. 

As  we  advance  in  the  Correspondence,  in  the  letters 
near  its  end  we  perceive  a  gleam,  as  it  were;  we  feel 
a  something  that  resembles  mirth.  There  is  the  same 
disgust  of  life,  but  with  it  I  know  not  what  of  fellow- 
feeling  that  corrects  it.  He  loses  the  Due  de  Chev- 
reuse;  and  he  delights  in  keeping  about  him  at 
Cambrai  the  grandchildren  of  his  friends,  the  sons 
of  the  Due  de  Chaulnes,  and  in  surrounding  himself 
with  all  that  happy  youth.  He  loses  the  Due  de  Beau- 
villiers:  "As  for  me,  who  have  been  deprived  of  see- 
ing him  for  so  many  years,"  he  writes  to  the  widowed 


^fenelon.  383 

duchess,  "I  still  talk  to  him,  I  still  open  my  heart  to 
him,  I  believe  I  meet  him  before  God;  and  though  I 
do  mourn  him  bitterly,  I  cannot  think  that  I  have  lost 
him.  O  what  reality  there  is  in  that  close  intercourse! 
.  .  .  A  little  while,  and  we  shall  mourn  no  longer. 
We  die  ourselves,  and  what  we  love  is  living,  and  dies 
not  again."  This  presentiment,  this  involuntary  sensa- 
tion of  a  soul  that  approaches  the  end  of  its  earthly  way 
and  is  about  to  reach  its  goal,  shows  through  all 
of  Fenelon's  last  letters,  and  communicates  itself  by 
many  a  little  sign  of  joy  to  the  reader.  These  last 
letters  have  the  effect  upon  me  of  the  last  days  of  a 
mild  winter,  beyond  which  1  feel  the  springtime. 


XIII. 

Comte  Hntolne  Ibamiltom 


voL.„.-.s.  33g 


xm. 
Comte  Sntoine  1bamiUon» 

THE  modern  vice  that  has  done,  perhaps,  the 
most  harm  in  these  latter  days  is  the  pompous 
"phrase,"  the  declamatory  grand  words  that 
some  writers  play  with,  others  take  seriously,  and 
which  all  the  first  who  used  them,  even  those  who 
played  with  them,  took  seriously  also.  I  do  not 
mean  that  we  are  ill  of  that  malady  only,  nor  that  it 
is  not  allied  to  many  others;  but  1  think  that  disease 
is  one  of  the  most  contagious,  the  one  more  directly 
injurious  of  late  years,  and  that  it  is  doing  a  good 
work  to  endeavour  to  cure  it.  Whatever  could  con- 
tribute to  bring  back  tc  us  our  first  clearness  of  ex- 
pression, to  rid  the  French  language  and  the  French 
mind  of  pathos  and  emphasis,  of  the  false  colour 
and  the  false  lyricism  which  mingles  in  everything, 
would  be  a  true  service  rendered  not  only  to  taste 
but  also  to  the  public  mind.  To  accustom  ourselves 
to  write  as  we  speak  and  as  we  think,  is  not  that 
to  put  ourselves  in  the  way  of  thinking  rightly  ? 
After  all,  great  efforts  are   not  needed  in  France  to 

387 


388  Comte  Hntoine  IbamUton, 

return  to  that  clearness,  for  it  is  not  only  good  form 
among  us,  it  constitutes  tiie  basis  of  our  language 
and  of  the  spirit  of  our  nation:  it  was  its  tendency 
and  evident  quality  for  centuries,  and  in  the  midst 
of  all  that  has  since  been  done  to  change  it  we  still 
find  numerous  and  excellent  specimens  of  it  to-day. 

I  shall  go  farther  and  say  that,  whatever  may  be 
done,  clearness  is  and  always  will  be  a  prirhe  neces- 
sity in  a  nation  eager  and  hurried  like  ours;  which 
needs  to  hear  quickly,  and  has  no  patience  to  listen- 
long;  we  are  brought  back  to  our  original  quality 
by  our  very  defects. 

Nevertheless,  among  the  celebrated  writers  of  our 
language,  all  are  not  equally  fitted  to  give  us  the 
impression  or  show  us  the  image  of  this  perfect 
clearness.  No  doubt  some  examples  of  it  are  found 
in  all  ages,  even  among  our  classics;  witness  Philippe 
de  Commines  and  Montaigne.  In  spite  of  the  pedan- 
try of  false  knowledge  and  the  remains  of  barbarism, 
this  tendency  and  particular  turn  of  the  French  mind 
did  not  fail  to  come  to  the  light,  and  original  natures 
took  the  lead  in  it.  But  it  was  not  until  a  certain  period 
more  equally  enlightened,  that  this  clearness  became 
habitual  and,  we  may  say,  universal  among  good 
writers,  passing  into  common  usage.  That  period 
is  quite  recent;  I  date  it  towards  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  It  was  not  until  the  middle 
of  that  century  that  French  prose,  which  had  done 
its   grammar  with   Vaugelas  and   its  rhetoric   under 


COMTE  ANTOINE  HAMILTON. 
From  an  old  print. 


Comte  Hntolne  Ibamilton.  389 

Balzac,  emancipated  itself  all  of  a  sudden,  and  be- 
came the  language  of  a  perfectly  polished  man  in 
Pascal.  But  what  one  man  of  genius  then  did,  and 
what  other  superior  minds  trained  to  the  world, 
such  as  La  Rochefoucauld  and  Retz,  practised  also, 
it  needed  an  interval  of  time  to  bring  others  to  profit 
by,  and  for  the  coin  with  the  new  effigy  to  circulate. 

La  Bruyere  marks  distinctly  the  new  era;  he  in- 
augurates a  species  of  regime  wholly  modern,  in 
which  clearness  of  expression  seeks  to  combine  itself 
with  the  action  of  the  mind.  Besides  La  Bruyere, 
we  find  other  examples  less  striking  but,  perhaps, 
more  facile,  more  natural.  Fenelon,  in  his  non-theo- 
logical writings,  is  the  lightest  and  most  graceful 
model  of  the  kind.  Certain  distinguished  women, 
with  the  tact  they  receive  from  nature,  did  not  wait 
for  La  Bruyere's  example  to  show  their  vivid  and 
inimitable  sense  of  the  fit  and  the  appropriate  in 
language. 

At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  during 
the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth,  there  came  a  period 
by  itself  for  purity  and  the  easy  flow  of  French  prose. 
When  the  second  half  of  the  latter  century  came, 
when  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  appeared,  it  was  en- 
riched with  loftier,  more  brilliant,  and  wholly  novel 
features;  our  prose  gained  in  the  shading  of  impres- 
sions and  descriptions,  but  declamation  was  then  in- 
troduced; false  enthusiasm,  false  sensibility,  had  their 
course.     This  "declamation,"  from  which  we  suffer 


39°  Comte  Hntoine  Ibamilton, 

still  [1850],  has  taken  many  forms  for  nearly  a  cent- 
ury; it  has  had  its  renewals  and  changes  of  colour 
with  each  generation,  but  it  dates  in  the  first  instance 
from  Rousseau. 

But  however  that  may  be,  between  La  Bruyere  or 
Fenelon  and  before  the  advent  of  Jean-Jacques,  there 
came  a  calm,  enlightened  period  of  moderation,  in 
which  we  find  the  language  such  as  we  speak  it,  or 
might  speak  it,  and  such  as  nothing  has  yet  made 
ancient.  "  Our  prose,"  says  Lemontey,  "  stopped  at 
the  point  where,  being  neither  too  curt  nor  too  for- 
mal [hackee  ni  periodique]  it  became  the  most  supple 
and  elegant  instrument  of  thought."  We  may  cer- 
tainly, as  amateurs,  prefer  other  epochs  of  prose  than 
that;  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  moments 
when  our  prose  took  on  more  fulness  and  grandeur; 
but  for  habitual  and  general  use  I  know  none  more 
perfect,  more  convenient,  or  better  suited  for  inter- 
course, than  the  language  of  that  date.  For  princi- 
pal examples  I  take,  at  a  first  glance;  Le  Sage,  the 
Abbe  Prevost,  Mme.  de  Staal  (de  Launay),  Mme. 
du  Deffand,  Fontenelle,  Vauvenargues,  Montesquieu 
finally,  and  Voltaire,  already  in  his  variety  and  rich- 
ness. I  find  also,  at  the  very  beginning,  the  incom- 
parable writer  of  Memoirs,  Saint-Simon,  and  a  unique 
narrator,  on  whom  I  pause  for  a  few  words  to-day — 
the  very  agreeable  Hamilton. 

Antoine  Hamilton,  one  of  the  most  Attic  writers 
of  our  literature,  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  an 


Comte  Bntoine  Ibamilton.  391 

Englishman  of  Scotch  descent.  We  have  seen  other 
foreigners — Horace  Walpole,  the  Abbe  Galiani,  Baron 
de  Beseuval,  the  Prince  de  Ligne — possess,  or  assume, 
the  French  spirit  marvellously  well;  but  Hamilton 
does  so  to  a  degree  that  allows  no  other  element  to 
be  seen;  he  is  that  spirit,  that  wit  itself.  Educated 
from  childhood  in  France,  living  afterwards  at  the 
semi-French  Court  of  Charles  II,  at  all  times  a  pupil 
of  Saint-Evremond  and  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont, 
with  a  vein  in  him  of  the  Cowleys,  the  Wallers,  and 
the  Rochesters,  he  was  a  cross  between  all  that  was 
most  acute,  refined,  and  witty  in  the  two  races.  Eng- 
land, which  had  taken  Saint-Evremond  from  France, 
restored  him  in  the  person  of  Hamilton,  and  it  was 
full  consolation.  Louis  XIV  gave  subsidies  to  Charles 
II,  he  gave  him  also  a  mistress:  the  emigration  of 
James  II  returned  both  to  Louis  XIV,  in  the  persons 
of  a  great  warrior,  Berwick,  and  (what  is  more  rare) 
a  charming  writer,  a  light  and  airy  chronicler  of 
elegancies. 

What  is  known  of  the  life  of  Hamilton  ?  Very  little. 
He  was  born,  they  say,  in  1646,  in  which  case  he 
would  be  a  little  younger  than  La  Bruyere  and  a  little 
older  than  Fenelon.  In  the  flower  of  his  age  he  was 
at  that  Court  of  Charles  II  which  he  describes  to  us  so 
vividly;  but  the  Hamiltons  of  whom  he  speaks  were 
his  brothers;  personally,  he  gives  himself  no  role. 
Whatever  role  he  may  have  played,  he  was,  first  and 
last,  an  observer.     Endowed  with  a  keen  sense  of  the 


392  Comte  Hntoine  Ibamilton, 

ridiculous,  and  a  most  penetrating  social  perception, 
he  could  distinguish  the  faintest  shades  and  fix  them 
with  a  light,  ineffaceable  stroke.  He  makes  no  diffi- 
culty in  admitting  that  he  gladly  amused  himself  at 
the  expense  of  those  who  deserved  it.  Returning  to 
France  on  the  Revolution  of  1688,  in  the  suite  of  his 
legitimate  king,  he  lived  there  in  the  best  society, 
compensating  himself  for  the  ennui  of  the  pious  little 
Court  at  Saint-Germain  by  visits  to  the  Berwicks  and 
the  Grammonts.  He  made  couplets  in  the  style  of 
Coulanges,  and  wrote  letters  to  friends,  mingling  prose 
with  verse,  in  the  style  of  Chaulieu.  He  was  inti- 
mate with  the  latter,  and  frequented  the  Vendomes 
and  the  society  of  the  Temple.  We  find  him  in  de- 
mand at  Sceaux,  where  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  held 
Court  of  bel  esprit.  Dangeau  wrote  to  him  apropos 
of  a  letter  of  his  to  Berwick,  which  was  thought  to 
be  full  of  delicate  praises:  "  It  is  wholly  in  the  style  of 
the  best-bred  persons  at  Marly." 

But  this  kind  of  vogue  would  only  have  led  him 
to  be  appreciated  by  his  friends  and  the  societies  he 
enlivened:  it  would  not  have  procured  him  a  distinct 
place  and  physiognomy  among  the  chroniclers  of  that 
day.  Speaking  of  the  expedition  of  the  Pretender  in 
1708,  and  of  the  seigneurs  who  took  part  in  it,  Saint- 
Simon  mentions  Hamilton  confusedly:  "The  Hamil- 
tons,"  he  says,  "were  brothers  of  the  Comtesse  de 
Grammont;  they  were  the  leading  lords  of  Scotland, 
brave,  full  of  intelligence,  and  faithful.     Through  their 


Comte  Hntoine  Ibainilton.  393 

sister,  they  mingled  much  with  the  best  company  of 
our  Court;  they  were  poor,  and  had  each  their  own 
little  corner  of  singularity."  Here  then  is  our  Hamil- 
ton confounded  with  the  others  of  his  family,  and,  for 
all  distinctive  mark,  we  are  told  that  they  had  each 
"their  own  little  corner  of  singularity!"  And  there 
he  would  still  remain  for  us  if,  when  already  old,  in 
his  sixtieth  year,  he  had  not  taken  it  into  his  head,  in 
order  to  amuse  his  brother-in-law,  the  Comte  de 
Grammont,  then  over  eighty  years  old  and  still  charm- 
ing, to  write  down  the  latter's  youthful  adventures 
when  Chevalier  de  Grammont;  to  make  himself,  in 
short,  his  Quintius  Curtius  and  his  Plutarch,  in  mer- 
riment. 

This  is  the  only  work  of  Hamilton  that  is  worth  re- 
reading to-day;  as  for  his  verses  and  even  his  Confes, 
they  need  not  be  mentioned.  His  verses,  praised, 
however,  by  Voltaire,  praised  even  by  Boileau  (who 
must  have  grumbled  as  he  wrote  that  polite  letter),  are 
entirely  out  of  date  for  us,  and  almost  unreadable;  they 
are  nothing  but  a  string  of  rhymes  in  which,  here  and 
there,  a  happy  thought  flashes  out.  How  is  it  that  in 
witty  works  that  have  pleased  good  judges  when 
born,  there  should  be  so  much  that  decays  with  time 
and  dies  out  ?  There  is  a  Voiture  in  every  man  of 
wit  who  is  nothing  but  that;  I  call  by  Voiture's  name 
the  wit  of  fashion  that  has  but  one  season  and  which 
a  breath  wilts;  there  is  much  of  Voiture  in  Hamilton's 
verses.     Pure  poesy  is  not  to  be  looked  for  in  him. 


394  Comte  Hntoine  Ibamtlton. 

He  has  that  of  his  day  in  sportiveness;  he  knows  the 
right  quantity  for  the  French  mind  at  that  period: 
"Whatever  its  ornaments,"  he  says,  "in  a  lengthy 
narrative  poesy  is  always  wearisome."  He  likes 
Horace,  but  he  seems  not  to  know  what  Milton  was. 
Shakespeare  is  to  him  as  if  he  were  not;  though  it 
seems  as  if  the  roguish  Ariel  disguised  itself  and,  all 
unknown,  glided  into  his  prose. 

His  Conies  might  have  something  more,  perhaps, 
of  this  Ariel  fancy  if  they  were  less  confused.  He 
wrote  them  on  a  wager  to  amuse  his  sister,  the 
Comtesse  de  Grammont,  and  in  imitation  of  the 
"Arabian  Nights  " ;  they  are  full  of  allusions,  the  mean- 
ing of  which  escapes  us.  Still,  through  them  all, 
something  natural  and  piquant  is  felt.  The  Due  de 
Levis,  who  believed  he  continued  them,  was  merely 
insipid.  If  I  wished  to  give  an  idea  of  them  by  some 
modern  production  I  should  name  the  pretty  fantasy 
of  Alfred  de  Musset's  Merle  hlanc. 

But  the  Memoires  de  Grammont,  they  last;  it  is 
to  them  that  the  fairy  has  given  all  her  grace.  The 
manner  seems  made  expressly  to  illustrate  Voltaire's 
words:  "Grace  in  expressing  itself  is  worth  more 
than  what  is  said."  The  foundation  is  slender;  not 
precisely  frivolous,  as  persons  have  called  it;  it  is  not 
more  frivolous  (light  and  airy  as  it  is)  than  all  human 
comedy.  There  are  many  heavy  treatises  that  are 
more  frivolous,  though  without  the  appearance  of  it. 
The  hero  of  the  Memoirs  is  the  Chevalier,  afterwards 


Comte  Bntotne  Ibamilton.  395 

the  Comte  de  Grammont,  the  man  most  in  fashion  in 
his  day,  the  ideal  of  a  French  courtier  at  a  period 
when  the  Court  was  all  in  all,  the  type  of  that  airy, 
brilliant,  supple,  alert,  indefatigable  personage,  repair- 
ing all  faults  and  follies  with  a  sword-thrust  or  a  witty 
saying.  Our  century  has  seen  some  fine  remains  of 
the  race  in  the  Vicomte  Alexandre  de  Segur  and 
Comte  Louis  de  Narbonne.  The  characteristic  of  that 
light  race  was  in  never  being  false  to  themselves. 
Grammont,  dangerously  ill  and  urged  to  religion  by 
Dangeau,  sent  for  that  purpose  by  the  king,  turned  to 
his  wife,  who  was  very  devout  herself:  "Countess," 
he  said,  "if  you  do  not  take  care,  Dangeau  will  filch 
my  conversion  from  you."  Which  did  not,  however, 
prevent  the  conversion,  in  the  end,  from  being  suffi- 
ciently sincere. 

But  Grammont  himself  does  not  matter  very  much 
to  us.  Though  the  hero  of  Hamilton's  narrative,  he 
is  often  only  its  pretext.  It  is  the  manner  of  showing 
him  that  makes  the  charm.  Envious  folk  (and  Bussy 
was  one  of  them),  while  granting  to  the  Comte  de 
Grammont  a  gallant  and  exquisite  wit,  added  that  the 
expressions  of  his  face  and  his  tones  often  "gave 
value  to  things  he  said  that  were  nothing  at  all  on  the 
lips  of  others."  Hamilton  made  good  use  of  Bussy's 
remark  by  giving  to  Grammont  his  every  accent,  and 
perhaps  by  lending  him  some.  Nothing  can  equal 
his  manner  of  telling  and  narrating,  easy,  happy, 
uniting  the  trivial  to  the  choice,  with  a  perpetual  yet 


396  Comte  Hntoine  Ibamilton. 

almost  unconscious  satire,  an  irony  that  glides  and 
does  not  force  itself,  and  a  perfected  art  of  disparaging. 
He  says,  somewhere,  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham, 
who  was  paying  court  to  a  beauty: 

"She  did  not  dislike  backbiting;  he  was  father  and  mother  of  it; 
he  wrote  ballads  and  invented  old  women's  tales,  over  which  she 
went  crazy.  But  his  particular  talent  lay  in  catching  the  absurdities 
in  people's  talk,  and  mimicking  them  in  their  presence  without  their 
perceiving  it.  In  short,  he  could  flay  all  kinds  of  personages  with  so 
much  grace  and  charm  that  it  was  difficult  to  do  without  him  when 
he  chose  to  take  the  trouble  to  please." 

I  think  1  catch  in  that  portrait  a  reflection  of  Hamil- 
ton himself;  but  it  is  more  especially  when  he  paints 
his  sister,  the  beautiful  Miss  Hamilton,  who  married 
Grammont;  it  is  on  that  charming  page,  among  so 
many  others,  that  indications  escape  him  which  I 
trace  back  to  himself,  applying  them  not  to  his  muse 
(solemn  term  that  does  not  suit  him),  but  to  his  grace 
as  a  writer: 

"She  had,"  he  says,  "an  open  forehead,  white  and  smooth,  hair 
well-plaited  and  docile  to  the  natural  arrangement  it  costs  such  trouble 
to  produce.  A  certain  freshness  that  borrowed  colours  cannot  imitate, 
formed  her  complexion.  Her  eyes  were  not  large,  but  they  were 
lively,  and  her  glances  signified  all  that  she  wished  them  to  say;  her 
mouth  was  full  of  charm,  and  the  outline  of  her  face  was  perfect.  A 
delicate  little  turned-up  nose  was  not  the  least  ornament  of  a  face  that 
was  very  agreeable.  .  .  .  Her  mind  was  a  good  deal  like  her 
face.  It  was  not  by  aggressive  vivacity,  the  sallies  of  which  only 
stun  and  bewilder,  that  she  sought  to  shine  in  conversation.  She 
avoided  still  more  that  affected  slowness  of  speech,  the  weight  of 
which  sends  us  to  sleep;  but,  without  being  in  haste  to  speak,  she 
said  what  it  was  necessary/  to  say  and  no  more." 


Comte  Bntoine  IfDamllton.  397 

That  is  how,  in  his  perfect  diction,  he  appears  to 
me  himself.  Shall  1  add  that  in  this  very  portrait  of 
his  sister  his  malicious '  pen  does  not  refrain  from  an 
insinuation  on  hidden  beauties,  which  proves  that,  if 
need  be,  his  indiscretion  respects  nothing.  We  have 
since  had  other  Memoirs  of  courtiers  and  celebrated 
dandies.  The  Marechal  de  Richelieu,  that  spoilt  child 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  of  Voltaire,  that  last  type 
of  the  consummate  courtier  who  took  the  place  of 
the  Comte  de  Grammont,  also  desired  his  historian. 
Soulavie  edited  from  his  notes  volumes  full  of  scandal 
and  diverting  adventures,  more  or  less  vulgar.  The 
flower  of  the  genus  was  not  in  them,  it  had  been 
plucked  already:  I  do  not  know  if  there  was  no  other 
Comte  de  Grammont,  but  it  is  certain  that  there  has 
been  but  one  Hamilton. 

Also  there  is  but  one  age  for  certain  fortunate 
works.  That  a  gentle,  polished  mind,  penetrating, 
shrewd,  and  refined,  shedding  upon  surrounding 
things  and  on  its  neighbour  a  universal  airy  satire — 
that  such  a  mind  should  be  born  into  the  world  does 

'  It  may  be  well  to  say  here  that  malicieux  is  one  of  the  many 
words  identical  in  French  and  English  which  have  not  the  same  mean- 
ing in  both  languages.  "Malicious"  in  English  means  harbouring 
enmity  without  cause;  proceeding  from  extreme  hatred  or  ill-will 
(Stormonth).  Malicieux  in  French  means  inclination  to  do  little 
mischievous  things  {mechancetes);  little  mischievous  things  done  for 
pastime  (Littre).  We  have  no  word  or  expression  in  English  that  trans- 
lates, or  can  represent  malicieux;  "  mischievous"  is  ihe  nearest  ;  but 
it  is  quite  inadequate,  and  conveys  neither  the  delicate  humour  nor  th& 
roguishness. — Tr. 


398  Comte  Bntoine  Ibamilton, 

not  suffice.  All  things  about  that  mind  must  be  ar- 
ranged to  favour  its  possessor;  the  climate,  as  it  were, 
must  be  prepared;  in  the  midst  of  fools  and  vulgari- 
ans who,  in  all  ages,  swarm  in  the  world  and  in  the 
best  society,  a  well-assorted  company  of  choice  minds 
must  assemble  apart,  and  be  able  to  listen  and  reply 
to  him,  losing  nothing  if  he  speaks  low,  and  asking 
from  him  no  more  and  nothing  else  than  he  can  say. 
In  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  world, 
in  this  respect,  changed;  declamation  obtained  the 
upper  hand,  and  a  certain  false  keying-up  became 
necessary.  Minds  like  those  of  Hamilton  would  have 
been  much  less  enjoyed;  in  fact,  they  must  have 
forced  the  tone  to  be  felt  at  all.  At  the  pace  the  world 
is  now  going,  will  this  species  of  rare  minds  be  lost 
entirely?  Not  entirely,  I  think;  but  it  will  be  less 
and  less  in  view,  and  seen  in  a  less  good  light. 

Meantime,  it  is  profitable  to  put  ourselves  back, 
now  and  then,  into  a  liking  for  these  facile  writers,  in 
whom  there  is  nothing  old  or  worn.  "This  work," 
says  Voisenon,  speaking  of  the  Menwires  de  Gram- 
mont,  "is  at  the  head  of  those  we  ought  to  re-read 
regularly  every  year."  That  is  better  advice  than  one 
might  expect  from  Voisenon.  Grace,  1  know,  can- 
not be  taught  and  is  never  learned;  in  fact,  it  would 
be  knowing  it  to  attempt  to  copy  it.  It  is  good, 
however,  to  talk  of  it  sometimes,  and  circle  round  it; 
something  of  it  always  remains. 

To  analyse  these  Memoirs  of  Grammont  would  be 


Comte  Hntoine  Ibamilton,  399 

a  thankless  and  stupid  task,  for  It  is  manner  and  the 
method  of  expression  that  give  them  value;  as  for  the 
narrative,  after  a  certain  moment,  it  goes  pretty  much 
as  God  pleases.  The  opening  adventures  are  the 
most  interesting  and  the  most  consecutive.  The  first 
loss  at  cards  in  Lyons  with  the  horse-dealer,  the  re- 
venge of  the  chevalier  at  the  siege  of  Turin,  the  game 
with  the  Comte  de  Cameran  at  which,  foreseeing  he 
meant  to  cheat,  de  Grammont  has  himself  secretly 
supported  by  a  detachment  of  infantry — all  these  are 
scenes  of  pure  comedy.  We  feel  at  once  how  ideas 
of  morality  have  changed  since  then,  when  the  his- 
torian, even  in  jest,  could  do  honour  to  a  hero  so 
lacking  in  honesty.  It  is  true  that  when  Hamilton,  at 
the  close  of  Louis  XIV's  period,  related  the  first  ex- 
ploits of  his  hero  under  Richelieu,  he  was  speaking 
of  another  century  and  of  things  that  were  nearly 
fabulous.  At  any  rate,  the  Abb6  Prevost  did  not 
think  he  ruined  his  Chevalier  Des  Grieux  in  the  mind 
of  the  reader,  by  attributing  the  like  peccadillos  to 
him.  We  must  conclude,  therefore,  that  on  this  point 
of  morality  we  have  improved  upon  those  times. 
The  personages  that  Hamilton  meets  by  the  way  and 
shows  to  us  become  instantly  living.  Who  does  not 
remember,  if  once  he  has  seen  them,  the  grotesque 
Cerise,  the  worthy  governor  Brinon,  and,  above  all, 
Malta,  the  chevalier's  second,  Malta  so  natural,  so 
heedless,  so  full  of  wit!  He  had  no  brains,  says 
Retz,  but  Hamilton  puts  in  action  his  naive  giddiness 


400  Comte  Bntoine  Ibamilton. 

and  makes  us  love  him.  At  Turin,  gallantry  begins; 
the  beautiful  ladies  are  mentioned  by  name;  it  is  still 
another  trait  of  manners  and  morals  that  these  Me- 
moirs could  have  appeared  in  the  lifetime  of  Hamilton, 
with  all  these  names  and  revelations,  without  causing 
an  uproar.  People  were  more  easy-going  in  certain 
ways  than  they  are  now. 

When  his  hero  goes  to  the  English  Court  the  style 
of  the  historian  changes  a  little;  we  enter  a  gallery 
of  portraits  and  find  a  complication  of  adventures 
which,  at  first,  we  have  some  difficulty  in  disentan- 
gling. Unity  ceases;  we  have  alternately  the  re- 
collections of  Grammont  and  the  recollections  of 
Hamilton,  which  combine  or  cross  each  other.  Still, 
with  a  little  attention,  we  end  by  recognising  where 
we  are,  at  a  Court  ball,  as  it  were,  amid  that  bevy  of 
English  beauties,  the  most  refined  and  the  most  aris- 
tocratic in  the  world,  whose  every  charm  the  painter 
has  rendered  with  discrimination.  I  have  before  my 
eyes  the  magnificent  edition  of  the  Memoirs  pub- 
lished in  London  in  1792,  with  numerous  engraved 
portraits;  those  beauties  defile  before  me,  the  squad- 
ron of  maids  of  honour  to  the  queen  and  the  Duch- 
ess of  York;  I  read  the  opposite  page,  and  I  find  that 
the  writer  with  his  pen  is  the  greater  painter. 

"  This  lady,"  he  says  of  a  Mrs.  Wettenhall,  "  was  what  is  properly 
called  a  wholly  English  beauty,  kneaded  of  lilies  and  roses;  snow 
and  milk  as  to  colours,  made  of  wax  in  regard  to  hands  and  arms, 
throat  and  feet,  but  all  without  soul  or  air.  Her  face  was  of  the 
prettiest,  but  it  was  always  the  same  face:  you  might  say  she  took 


Comte  Bntofne  Ibamilton.  401 

it  from  a  case  in  the  morning  and  put  it  back  at  night,  without 
using  it  during  the  day.  But  how  could  she  help  it  ?  Nature  had 
made  her  a  doll  from  childhood  and  doll  to  her  death  remained  the 
white  Wettenhall." 


So  of  one,  so  of  others,  but  among  them  no  resem- 
blance. Hamilton  is  not  the  Van  Dyck  of  that 
Court;  he  has  not  the  gravity  of  a  great  royal 
painter;  but  he  is  a  painter  apart,  of  his  own  kind, 
with  his  soft,  shrewd,  malicious  brush.  The  roguish 
Ariel  frolics  through  all  this  part  of  the  Memoirs,  and 
often  takes  delight  in  tangling  the  web.  What 
mystifications,  what  madcap  tales,  what  pretty  epi- 
sodes throughout  this  incessant  imbroglio!  What  an 
ironical  contrast  between  this  life  of  youth  and  jollity 
and  the  final  expiation  at  Saint  Germain!  The  last 
page,  which  sums  up  in  marriages  these  various 
whimsicalities  of  love  and  fortune,  ends  delightfully 
the  charming  tale,  which  was  beginning  to  drag 
slightly. 

The  style,  generally  happy,  natural,  negligent, 
fastidious  without  being  precieux,  is  not  free,  in  two 
or  three  places,  from  an  appearance  of  studied  nicety 
and  fine  writing,  which  betokens  the  approach  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  In  fact,  Hamilton,  may  be 
said  to  begin  the  eighteenth  century.  Already  he  has 
the  curt  phrase  of  Voltaire.  Bossuet  has  made  a 
timely  exit  from  the  world  just  as  Hamilton  begins 
to  write.  He  is  one  with  La  Fare,  Sainte-Aulaire, 
Chaulieu,    with   that    little   group    of  choice   volup- 

VOL.  11. — 26. 


402  Comte  Hntoine  Ibamilton. 

tuaries  who  mark  the  transition  between  the  two 
ages.  He  lays  a  finger,  as  it  were,  on  the  Lettres 
Persanes,  published  one  year  after  his  death.  But, 
in  the  Lettres  Persanes,  jesting  begins  to  attack 
grave  things,  and  to  take  on  a  bitterness  that  Mon- 
tesquieu afterwards  regretted.  Hamilton  never  jests, 
at  any  rate  never  with  pen  in  hand,  except  on  light 
matters:  he  scoffs  in  low  tones  only.  He  is  one 
of  the  happy,  lively  spirits  who  brighten  the  open- 
ing of  the  new  century  before  declamation  began 
with  Rousseau,  and  before  the  propaganda  to  which 
Voltaire  set  fire.  Epicurean,  perhaps,  on  many 
points,  he  at  least  had  the  prudence  to  feel  that,  to  be 
at  his  ease,  it  was  not  desirable  that  all  the  world 
should  be  so  too. 

Hamilton  died  at  Saint-Germain,  April  21,  1720,  in 
the  seventy-fourth  year  of  his  age,  with  feelings  of 
great  piety,  it  was  said,  and  after  receiving  the  sacra- 
ments; in  the  matter  of  death  he  became  once  more 
the  man  of  the  seventeenth  century.  A  few  "  Reflec- 
tions "  in  verse  show  that  he  did  really,  like  La 
Fontaine,  have  his  day  of  sincere  repentance.  I  find, 
among  the  Anecdotes  Litteraires  of  the  Abbe  de  Voi- 
senon  an  incident  relating  to  Hamilton  which  needs 
clearing  up:  "  The  Comte  de  Caylus,"  says  the  abbe, 
"who  saw  him  often  at  his  mother's  house,  assured 
me  more  than  once  that  he  was  not  amiable."  Can  it 
be  that  Hamilton  was  not  amiable  in  society .?  in 
spite  of  all  such  assurances,  could  we  ever  believe  it } 


Comte  Hntoine  Ibamilton.  403 

Hamilton,  when  the  Comte  de  Caylus  saw  him  at  his 
mother's  house,  was  an  old  man,  wearied  perhaps; 
moreover,  we  think  of  him  as  being,  at  all  times, 
capricious,  and  rather  unequal  in  moods,  like  his 
sister;  he  had  that  "  corner  of  singularity"  of  which 
Saint-Simon  tells  us.  He  himself  says,  somewhere, 
that  he  knows  when  to  hold  his  tongue,  and  that 
he  did  not  much  like  talking.  With  his  malicious 
causticity  and  the  sly  lip  for  which  he  was  so  well 
known,  he  needed  silence  around  him;  and,  perhaps, 
when  Caylus  met  him  at  his  mother's  house  there 
may  have  been  too  much  youth  and  tumult  to  suit 
him. 


XIV. 

Zbc  Iprinceeee  ^e0  1Ilr0ln0, 


405 


XIV. 
Ubc  iprincesse  t>c3  TDtrsins. 

DURING  the  negotiations  for  the  Peace  of  the 
Pyrenees,  Mazarin,  talking  one  day  with  the 
prime  minister  of  Spain,  Don  Luis  de  Haro, 
spoke  of  the  political  women  of  the  Fronde,  the 
Duchesse  de  Longueville,  the  Duchesse  de  Chevreuse, 
and  the  Princess  Palatine,  as  being  each  of  them 
capable  of  overthrowing  ten  kingdoms: 

"  You  are  very  lucky  in  Spain,"  he  added;  "  you  have,  as  every- 
where else,  two  sorts  of  women,  coquettes  in  abundance,  and  very 
few  good  women;  the  former  think  only  of  pleasing  their  lovers, 
the  latter  their  husbands;  neither  have  any  ambition  but  for  luxury 
and  vanity;  they  know  only  how  to  write,  the  one  set  their  love- 
letters,  the  other  their  confessions:  neither  know  what  flour  is 
made  of,  and  their  head  swims  if  you  talk  to  them  on  business. 
Our  women,  on  the  contrary,  be  they  prudes  or  coquettes,  old, 
young,  silly  or  clever,  want  to  meddle  in  everything.  A  well- 
behaved  woman"  (I  allow  the  cardinal  to  use  his  own  language) 
"  would  not  sleep  with  her  husband,  nor  a  coquette  with  her  lover, 
unless  they  talked  to  her  during  the  day  of  State  affairs;  they  want  to 
see  all,  hear  all,  know  all,  and,  what  is  worse,  do  all  and  tangle  all. 
We  have  three  among  others,  Mmes.  de  Longueville,  de  Chevreuse, 
and  the  Princess  Palatine,  who  put  us  every  day  into  more  confusion 
than  there  ever  was  in  Babylon." 

"  Thanks  be  to  God,"  replied  Don  Luis,  with  little  gallantry,  "our 
women  are  what  you  say;  provided  they  handle  the  money,  whether 

407 


4o8  Ube  iprincessc  Des  XHrsins. 

of  their  husbands  or  lovers,  they  are  satisfied,  and  I  am  very  glad  they 
do  not  meddle  in  affairs  of  State;  for  if  they  did,  they  would  assuredly 
spoil  things  in  Spain  as  they  do  in  France." 

Those  are  harsh  words  on  both  sides,  which  would 
raise  a  terrible  quarrel  if  fully  discussed.  It  seems 
that  the  philosopher  Condorcet  did  formally  take 
upon  himself  to  reply  in  a  dissertation  (inserted  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Society  of  '89),  in  which  he  pleaded  for 
the  "admission  of  women  to  civic  rights,"  adducing 
in  support  of  their  claims  the  great  historical  examples 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  of  England,  the  Empress  Maria 
Theresa,  and  the  two  Empresses  Catherine  of  Russia; 
and  he  adds,  speaking  of  French  women: 

"Was  not  the  Princesse  des  Ursins  worth  a  little  more  than 
Chamillart?  Is  it  thought  that  the  Marquise  du  Chatelet  could 
not  write  a  better  despatch  than  M,  Rouille?  Would  Mme.  de 
Lambert  have  made  such  absurd  and  barbarous  laws  as  those  of 
Keeper  of  the  Seals  d'Armenonville  against  the  Protestants,  domestic 
thieves,  smugglers,  and  negroes  ?  " 

The  Princesse  des  Ursins  herself  treated  the  same 
question  less  solemnly  and  more  agreeably  in  one  of 
her  letters  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  The  latter  had 
written  to  her,  complaining  of  the  frivolity  of  the  talk 
that  reigned  more  than  ever  at  the  Court  of  Versailles: 
"Yes,  madame,"  she  writes,  "  the  greatest  difficulty 
lies  in  the  little  resources  to  be  found  in  the  men; 
they  are  nearly  all  selfish,  envious,  insincere,  insensi- 
ble to  the  public  good;  they  consider  all  sentiments 
contrary  to  their  own  as  romantic  and  impracticable." 
To  which  Mme.  des  Ursins  replies: 


PRINCESSE  DES  URSINS. 
From  an  old  print. 


XTbe  Iprfnccsse  t)es  mrsins.  409 

"  You  make  me  a  portrait  of  most  men,  which  is  not  much  to 
their  advantage;  and  what  I  think  the  worst  of  it  is,  that  it  seems  to 
me  rathernatural.  They  return  us  the  same;  for  if  one  is  to  believe 
them,  we  have  most  of  their  imperfections  and  few  of  their  good 
qualities.  Yet  it  is  certain  that  they  have  contemptible  pettinesses, 
and  they  tear  each  other  to  pieces  even  more  than  women  do. 
.  .  .  The  knowledge  that  I  have  of  the  world  attaches  me  still 
more  to  you;  1  find  there  all  the  virtues  and  the  goodness  that  are 
lacking  in  others." 

This  is  how,  while  complimenting  each  other,  two 
political  women  talked  of  men  in  their  tete-a-tete, 
and  took  their  revenge  on  Don  Luis  de  Haro  and 
Mazarin. 

But,  in  a  letter  dated  soon  after,  the  truth  is  per- 
ceptible; I  catch  a  confession  there  which  proves 
that  revenge  is  never  quite  complete,  even  to  the 
eyes  of  the  heroines  who  indulge  in  it.  The  Queen 
of  Spain,  forced  to  quit  Madrid  at  the  approach  of  the 
enemy,  was  obliged  to  part  with  most  of  the  ladies 
of  her  suite.  Three  hundred  remained  in  Madrid,  not 
caring  to  accompany  her,  though  many,  with  a  little 
goodwill,  could  have  done  so;  and  these  ladies  soon 
after  left  the  palace  to  go,  some  to  their  homes,  others 
to  convents,  in  short,  wherever  inclination  or  interests 
took  them.  On  the  queen's  return  to  the  capital, 
finding  them  absent  or  dispersed,  it  was  thought  a 
good  time  to  practise  economy;  soldiers  were  just 
then  more  needed  than  female  attendants  of  doubtful 
fidelity,  Mme.  des  Ursins  proceeded  to  cut  off  at 
one  stroke  the  three  hundred  ladies  of  the  queen. 
We  can  imagine  the  outcry.     Mme.  de  Maintenon, 


4IO  Ube  princesse  ^es  XHrsins. 

however,  writes  to  congratulate  her:  "As  I  never 
lose  my  interest  in  you,  I  am  delighted  that  you  have 
three  hundred  less  women  to  govern."  So  she  her- 
self and  Mme.  de  Maintenon  thought  three  hundred 
women  more  difficult  to  rule  than  three  hundred 
men — what  more  could  we  ask  ? 

The  Princesse  des  Ursins,  who  has  led  me  to  touch 
this  delicate  chord,  was  a  woman  in  politics  not,  I 
think,  of  the  first  order,  but  very  superior  as  such  to 
Mme.  de  Maintenon.  Having  played  in  Spain  an  im- 
portant role  for  thirteen  years,  interrupted  only  by 
a  short  dismissal,  then  abruptly  thrown  down,  as  if 
uprooted  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  without  leaving 
behind  her  either  partisans  or  minions,  she  has  excited 
contradictory  judgments,  most  of  them  severe.  Short 
of  being  historians,  we  should  have  little  chance  of 
forming  a  close  appreciation  of  her  fame  were  it  not 
that  we  possess  nearly  the  whole  of  her  correspond- 
ence with  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  It  is  through  those 
letters  that  we  are  able  to  approach  her  closely,  to 
enter  her  mind,  and  pronounce  an  opinion  upon  her 
with  more  esteem  than  has  usually  been  given  to  her. 

In  spite  of  her  name  [Orsini]  and  her  foreign  role, 
Mme.  des  Ursins  was  wholly  French,  of  the  blood 
of  the  Trimouilles,  and  the  daughter  of  M,  de  Noir- 
moutier,  who  was  so  mixed  up  in  the  intrigues  of 
the  Fronde,  and  so  closely  allied  with  Cardinal  de 
Retz,  whose  Memoirs  end  with  a  complaint  of  his 
unfaithfulness.      At  the  same  time.  Mile.  Anne-Marie 


TLbc  princesse  bcs  XHrsins.  411 

de  La  Trimouille,  through  her  mother,  was  almost 
a  bourgeoise  —  a  bourgeoise  of  Paris.  Her  mother, 
Aubry  by  name,  belonged  to  an  old  family  of  the 
robe  and  the  finances.  The  exact  date  of  the 
daughter's  birth  is  not  given,  but  it  must  have  been 
about  the  year  1642.  She  married  in  1659  her  first 
husband,  the  Prince  de  Chalais,  of  the  Talleyrand 
family.  A  duel  having  forced  him  to  quit  the  king- 
dom, she  followed  him  to  Spain,  then  to  Rome, 
where  she  became  a  widow.  She  was  young, 
beautiful,  with  much  intelligence,  much  worldly 
knowledge,  grace,  and  the  gift  of  language.  She 
sought  the  protection  of  the  French  cardinals,  more 
than  one  of  whom  was  not  insensible  to  her  charms. 
Saint-Simon,  who  paints  her  to  perfection  in  her 
first  form,  shows  her  to  us  again  in  the  fulness  of 
her  beauty  and  the  grandeur  of  her  bearing,  which 
she  well  knew  how  to  maintain  through  all  her 
vicissitudes: 

"She  was  tall  rather  than  short,  with  blue  eyes  that  invariably 
said  what  it  pleased  her  that  they  should  say;  with  a  perfect  figure, 
a  beautiful  bust,  and  a  face  which,  without  beauty,  was  charming. 
Her  air  was  extremely  noble,  with  something  majestic  in  her  whole 
bearing,  and  graces  so  natural  and  so  continual  in  all  things,  even  the 
most  insignificant,  that  1  have  never  seen  any  one  to  compare  with 
her  in  body  or  mind,  of  which  latter  she  had  a  great  deal  and  of  all 
sorts:  a  flatterer,  caressing,  insinuating,  cautious,  wishing  to  please  for 
the  sake  of  pleasing,  and  gifted  with  charms  from  which  it  was  im- 
possible to  defend  oneself  when  she  chose  to  reign  and  fascinate. 
And  with  it  all,  an  air  that,  in  spite  of  its  grandeur,  attracted  rather 
than  alarmed;  a  delightful  gift  of  conversation,  inexhaustible,  and 
withal,  very  amusing  from  all  she  had  seen  and  known  of  countries 


412  XTbe  ipclncesse  &es  "Qlrstns. 

and  people ;  a  voice  and  manner  of  speaking  very  agreeable,  with 
a  gentle  air  ;  she  had  read  much,  and  she  was  a  person  of  much 
reflection.  A  great  choice  of  the  best  company,  much  practice  in 
keeping  it  and  even  in  holding  a  Court  ;  great  politeness,  yet  with 
great  distinction,  and,  above  all,  much  care  not  to  put  herself  forward 
except  with  dignity  and  discretion.  She  was,  moreover,  the  person 
in  the  world  best  fitted  for  intrigue  ;  who  had  passed  her  life  in  it  in 
Rome  by  her  own  choice  ;  much  ambition,  but  a  vast  ambition 
far  above  that  of  her  sex  and  of  the  ordinary  ambition  of  men,  and  an 
equal  desire  to  be  and  to  govern.      .      .      ." 

I  pause  in  the  quotation  of  this  portrait  which  the 
inexhaustible  painter  does  not  end  so  soon.  Such  was 
the  Princesse  des  Ursins  in  Rome  at  the  time  she 
made  her  second  marriage  with  Prince  Orsini  [called 
Ursins  in  French],  Ducde  Bracciano.  Mme.  des  Ursins 
was  at  that  time  called  Mme.  de  Bracciano  when  in 
Paris,  where  she  sometimes  went  for  long  visits,  giv- 
ing little  balls  for  marriageable  heiresses,  which  always 
ended  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening.  But  her  usual 
residence  was  Italy  and  chiefly  in  Rome.  Becoming 
a  widow  for  the  second  time,  and  without  children,  it 
seemed  that  her  remarkable  qualities,  much  appreci- 
ated by  friends,  were  not  likely  to  be  exercised  on  a 
wider  field  than  that  of  a  brilliant  society,  when  an 
unforeseen  necessity  occurred  to  bring  her  forward. 

Louis  XIV,  in  accepting  the  crown  of  Spain  for  his 
grandson,  the  Due  d'Anjou,  married  him  to  a  princess 
of  Savoie,  sister  to  the  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne,  the 
wife  of  his  brother.  It  was  necessary  to  find  a  guide 
for  the  young  queen  (a  child  only  thirteen  years  of 
age),  an  experienced  adviser  to  form  her,  to  train  her 


Ubc  Iprtnce5se  C)es  Xflrsins.  413 

not  to  shock  expectations  around  her,  but  to  play  her 
part  with  dignity.  It  was  found  that  Mme.  des  Ursins 
alone  united  the  difficult  conditions  of  this  post:  she 
had  lived  in  Spain,  knew  the  language  and  the  cus- 
toms, and  held  the  rank  of  grandee  through  her  hus- 
band. The  Cardinal  of  Porto-Carrero,  who  was  the 
influencing  personage  in  Spain,  had  formerly,  when  in 
Rome,  been  very  much  in  love  with  her  in  common 
with  many  others.  She  knew  intimately  all  the  south- 
ern Courts  and  those  who  figured  at  them.  It  was 
therefore  decided  that  no  one  was  so  fitted  as  Mme.  des 
Ursins  to  fill  the  place  of  Camerara  mayor,  or  Superin- 
tendent of  the  Household  of  the  queen.  Until  then,  her 
ambitions  and  her  intrigues  had  been  spent  on  accessory 
and  secondary  affairs.  She  now  felt  that  the  game  was 
about  to  come  into  her  own  hands,  but  she  carefully 
avoided  seizing  it  too  eagerly;  in  fact,  she  made  her- 
self entreated  for  what  was  really  the  object  of  her 
secret  desire.  She  was  not  less  than  fifty-nine  years 
old  when  this  career  opened  to  her  (1701).  Mme.  de 
Coulanges,  on  hearing  the  news,  while  considering 
Mme.  des  Ursins  very  worthy  of  the  office,  thought 
that  at  her  age  nothing  agreeable  in  life  could  be  ex- 
pected; this  came  of  her  being  a  woman  only,  incapa- 
ble of  conceiving  in  her  sex  other  passions  than  those 
that  were  loving  and  tender.  Mme.  des  Ursins,  who 
added  to  those  passions  the  ambitions  of  men,  entered 
upon  her  new  role  with  a  zeal,  an  ardour,  an  activity 
that  were  more  than  virile. 


4^4  Ube  iprinccsse  ^es  "Clrsfns. 

Two  distinct  epochs  are  to  be  noted  in  her  thir- 
teen years  of  influence  in  Spain.  From  the  first  she 
charmed  the  young  queen,  a  gracious  and  really  in- 
telligent pupil,  became  necessary  to  her,  and,  through 
her,  became  equally  so  to  the  young  king,  Philippe  V, 
a  prince  of  upright  mind,  brave  in  war,  but  timid 
in  character,  with  an  imperious  temperament,  which 
made  him  blindly  dependent  on  his  wife  {uxorius) ; 
in  a  word,  chaste,  devout,  and  amorous.  During  the 
three  first  years  Mme.  des  Ursins  worked  to  establish 
herself  firmly  in  the  minds  of  these  two  royal  person- 
ages; she  put  aside  all  rival  influences,  foiled  them  by 
every  means  in  her  power,  excited  endless  clamour, 
and  for  want  of  enough  discretion  and  prudence  de- 
served to  receive  her  recall  by  order  of  Louis  XIV. 
In  this  first  downfall  she  displayed  qualities  far  more 
rare  and  more  dextrous  than  any  she  would  have 
shown  under  permanent  good  fortune.  Like  a  good 
general  who  proves  his  skill  in  a  retreat,  she  managed 
her  own  so  well  that  she  induced  Louis  XIV,  instead 
of  obliging  her  to  go  at  once  into  exile  in  Italy,  to  see 
her  and  hear  her  at  Marly  and  Versailles.  There,  on 
the  ground,  in  person,  she  reconquered  her  influ- 
ence, and  at  the  same  time  she  learned  to  understand 
better  the  line  of  policy  she  ought  henceforth  to 
follow. 

Returning  to  Madrid  all-powerful  and  upheld  by 
authority,  she  reigned  there,  absolutely,  in  the  interior 
of  the  palace,  resolved  in  future  to  remain  in  perfect 


TLbc  princesse  &es  THrsins.  415 

accord  with  the  Court  and  Cabinet  of  Versailles,  at 
any  rate  until  the  day  when  that  Cabinet  should  put 
itself  in  disaccord  with  the  interests  of  Spain.  It  is 
from  the  date  of  her  return  that  we  have  the  series  of 
her  letters  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  in  which  it  is  such 
pleasure  to  hear  her  and  study  her.  It  happens  to  us 
almost  as  it  happened  to  Louis  XIV;  the  moment  that 
Mme.  des  Ursins  succeeds  in  being  heard,  she  recovers 
her  place  in  our  minds. 

I  must  nevertheless  say  one  thing  on  this  first  period 
{170 1 -1 704)  on  which  so  many  narratives  have  been 
written.  Louville,  one  of  the  principal  agents  of 
French  influence  on  Philippe  V  before  the  arrival  of 
Mme.  des  Ursins,  shows  himself  unjust  and  insulting 
towards  her;  he  speaks  of  her,  like  an  evicted  rival, 
with  all  sorts  of  abuse,  in  Memoirs  that  were  taken 
from  his  papers  and  published  under  his  name.  The 
Memoirs  of  Noailles,  edited  by  the  Abbe  Millot,  are 
more  equitable.  Without  entering  into  the  detail  of 
intrigues,  it  is  evident  that  Mme.  des  Ursins  con- 
tributed, from  the  first,  to  guide  the  queen  wisely  and 
to  lead  her  into  a  path  where  she  made  herself  wel- 
come to  her  new  subjects  and  cherished  by  the  Spanish 
people.  The  graces  and  the  intelligence  of  that  child- 
queen  would  not  have  sufficed  without  the  direction 
of  this  constant  guide,  who  became  that  of  the  young 
king  also,  in  many  ways.  With  the  delightfully  jest- 
ing tone  peculiar  to  her,  Mme.  des  Ursins  is  very 
amusing  to  listen  to  on  this  topic: 


4i6  XTbe  iprincesse  t)es  Tllrsins. 

"  In  what  an  office,  good  God!  have  you  put  me!"  she  writes  to  the 
Marechale  de  Noailles.  "  I  have  not  a  moment  to  rest,  not  even  time 
to  speak  to  my  secretary.  It  is  no  longer  a  matter  of  reposing  after 
dinner,  or  of  eating  when  I  am  hungry ;  I  am  only  too  happy  if  I  can 
snatch  a  bad  meal  at  odd  moments,  and  then  it  is  very  rare  that  1  am 
not  called  off  the  moment  that  I  sit  down  to  table.  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon  would  laugh  if  she  knew  all  the  details  of  my  office.  Tell  her, 
I  entreat  you,  that  it  is  I  who  have  the  honour  to  take  the  dressing- 
gown  of  the  King  of  Spain  when  he  gets  into  bed,  and  give  him  his 
slippers  when  he  gets  up.  To  that  point  I  have  patience;  but  every 
evening  when  the  king  enters  the  queen's  chamber  to  go  to  bed,  the 
Comte  de  Benevento  (grand  chamberlain)  puts  into  my  arms  his  Maj- 
esty's sword,  a  chamber-pot,  and  a  lamp,  which  I  usually  spill  upon 
my  clothes — it  is  too  grotesque.  Never  would  the  king  get  up  if  1  did 
not  open  his  curtains,  and  it  would  be  sacrilege  if  any  one  but  I  entered 
the  queen's  room  when  they  are  in  bed.  Lately  the  lamp  went  out, 
because  I  had  spilt  half  of  it;  I  did  not  know  where  the  windows 
were,  because  we  had  arrived  at  that  place  in  the  night;  I  came  near 
breaking  my  nose  against  the  wall,  and  we  were  nearly  a  quarter  of  an 
hour,  the  King  of  Spain  and  I,  stumbling  against  each  other,  trying  to 
find  them.  Her  Majesty  is  so  pleased  with  me  that  she  sometimes 
has  the  goodness  to  send  for  me  two  hours  before  I  want  to  get  up. 
The  queen  enters  into  all  these  jokes;  but  1  have  not  yet  secured  the 
confidence  she  gave  to  the  Piedmontese  waiting-women.  I  am  as- 
tonished at  that,  for  I  am  much  better  than  they;  I  am  sure  they  never 
washed  her  feet  or  took  off  her  shoes  and  stockings  as  neatly  as  I  do." 


She  had  to  pass  through  these  domestic  cares  in 
order  to  reach  affairs  of  State  and  bring  the  young 
couple  to  do  so  likewise.  During  the  campaign  in 
Italy,  which  Philippe  V  insisted  on  making  in  person, 
Mme.  des  Ursins,  according  to  the  duties  and  preroga- 
tives of  her  office,  never  left  the  young  queen  for  a 
single  instant.  She  was  with  her  at  the  sessions  of  the 
Junta,  and,  under  pretext  of  initiating  her  in  public 
affairs,  she  herself  obtained  their  secrets.     She  knew 


XTbe  iprincesse  Des  IClrsins.  417 

how  to  make  use  of  etiquette,  to  put  it  forward,  or 
modify  it,  or  loosen  it  altogetiier,  according  to  her  in- 
terests. She  comprehended  the  sort  of  concessions 
demanded  by  the  spirit  of  the  Spanish  people  and 
what  reforms  it  would  permit.  She  judged  the  minds 
of  the  grandees  at  first  sight,  and  was  under  no  illu- 
sions as  to  the  degree  of  support  she  might  expect 
from  them.  "  With  those  people,"  she  writes  to  M. 
de  Torcy,  "the  safest  way  is  to  show  firmness.  The 
more  I  see  them  closely,  the  less  I  find  that  they  de- 
serve the  esteem  I  once  thought  no  one  could  refuse 
them."  According  to  her,  the  Spanish  nation,  in  the 
person  of  its  grandees,  had  given  itself  to  a  son  of 
France  solely  from  the  belief  that  France  alone  could 
protect  and  defend  it.  France  remaining  victorious 
and  powerful,  Spain  was  safe;  but  after  each  defeat 
in  Germany  or  Flanders,  the  eyes  of  the  grandees 
turned  back  to  the  archduke,  and  their  fidelity  did  not 
hold  good. 

The  merit  and  the  art  of  Mme.  des  Ursins  were  to 
know,  in  so  short  a  time,  how  to  turn  to  good  ac- 
count the  favours  and  affability  of  the  queen,  and  thus 
render  her  truly  popular  among  the  real  Spanish  peo- 
ple in  the  centre  of  the  kingdom;  it  was  a  mirticle  to 
see  how  the  roots  of  this  new  royalty  struck  into  the 
hearts  of  the  old  Castilians  so  that  it  resisted  the 
storms  of  many  tumultuous  years.  The  exact  situa- 
tion was  this:  the  queen  ruled  the  king;  for  in  spite 
of  the  counsels  that  surrounded  him,  in  spite  of  the 

VOL.  II. 27. 


41 8  TLbc  princesse  t)es  "Orsins. 

admirable  instructions  of  Louis  XIV,  "the  force,  the 
impulse  that  decides  men  were  not  in  him;  he  had  re- 
ceived from  heaven  a  subaltern  and  even  subjugated 
spirit."  Now  the  queen  who,  in  1704,  had  just  com- 
pleted her  fourteenth  year,  needed  a  person  to  rule 
and  govern  her,  "and  give  her  good  advice  and  cour- 
age." Mme.  des  Ursins  was  essentially  that  person. 
Did  she  always  use  this  private  and  uncontrolled  influ- 
ence in  a  purely  devoted  and  disinterested  way  ?  It 
would  be  rash  to  affirm  that  she  did.  Louville,  her 
rival  and  enemy,  a  man  of  talent  and  ardour,  but  full  of 
passion,  presents  her  to  us  as  the  wickedest  woman 
on  earth,  who  ought  to  be  driven  out  instantly:  "so 
sordid  and  thieving  that  it  is  a  marvel."  He  brings 
the  same  accusation  against  Orry,  an  able  man  whom 
Louis  XIV  had  sent  into  Spain  to  put  some  order  into 
the  finances.  These  accusations  do  not  seem  to  me 
warranted.  Marechal  de  Berwick,  who  held  himself 
above  all  such  odious  bickerings,  does  more  justice  to 
Orry,  and  gives  the  impartial  reader  reason  to  think 
that  Mme.  des  Ursins  was  still  cleaner  in  this  respect, 
and  that  she  felt,  as  she  herself  said,  "very  easy  and 
free  in  carriage."  "I  am  a  beggar,  it  is  true,"  she 
writes  to  Mme.  de  Noailles  after  her  arrival  in  Spain, 
"but  still  more  am  I  proud."  Recounting  later  to 
Mme.  de  Maintenon  the  indignities  of  that  kind  charged 
against  both  of  them,  she  speaks  in  a  tone  of  lofty 
irony  and  sovereign  contempt  which  seems  to  ex- 
clude all  pretence. 


Ubc  iprincesse  &es  "Glrsins.  419 

But  what  seems  certain,  though  rather  strange  at 
first  sight,  is  that  Mme.  des  Ursins  at  over  sixty  years 
of  age  still  had  lovers.  "She  has  morals  on  a  see- 
saw," wrote  Louville  to  the  Due  and  Duchesse  de 
Beauvilliers.  The  Sieur  d'Aubigny,  a  sort  of  steward 
of  whom  she  made  an  equerry,  occupied  in  the  Retiro 
an  apartment  adjoining  that  of  the  princess,  at  the 
window  of  which  he  was  seen  one  day  to  brush  his 
teeth.  "He  was  a  tall,  handsome  fellow,  very  well 
made  and  free  and  agile  in  body  and  mind,"  not  at  all 
the  "brute  beast"  that  Louville  describes  him.  But 
he  was  bold  and  rather  insolent,  as  one  who  felt  his 
rights.  One  day  when  Louville  entered,  with  the 
Due  de  Medina-Coeli,  Mme.  des  Ursins's  apartment, 
where  she  took  them  to  converse  more  freely,  d'Au- 
bigny, who  was  installed  at  one  end,  seeing  only  the 
princess,  and  thinking  her  alone,  apostrophised  her  in 
terms  of  brusque  familiarity  of  the  crudest  kind,  which 
put  them  all  into  confusion.  Mme.  des  Ursins's  femi- 
nine defect  was  on  this  side:  "gallantry  and  devotion 
to  her  person  was  her  ruling  weakness,  surviving 
everything  else  to  final  old  age."  It  is  Saint-Simon 
who  says  it,  and  he  does  her  ample  justice  for  her 
lively  and  lofty  qualities. 

This  d'Aubigny  has  been  mentioned  as  the  principal 
cause  of  Mme.  des  Ursins's  first  downfall.  After  hav- 
ing caused  the  dismissal  of  Cardinal  d'Estrees,  whose 
place  was  filled  by  his  nephew,  the  Abbe  d'Estrees, 
Mme.  des  Ursins  discovered  that  the  latter,  contrary 


420  xcbe  iprincesse  t)es  "Clrsins. 

to  agreement,  was  writing  despatches  to  tiie  Court  of 
France  without  her  knowledge.  She  intercepted  one 
of  these  despatches  and  there  read  the  particulars  of 
her  relations  to  d'Aubigny;  but  what  piqued  her  most 
was  a  final  remark  of  the  ambassador  that  many  per- 
sons thought  them  married.  The  great  lady  rose  to 
her  full  height,  and  in  her  wrathful  indignation  wrote 
on  the  margin  of  the  despatch:  "As  for  marriage, 
no!  "  This,  at  least,  is  the  story  that  circulated.  The 
despatch  thus  commented  upon  went  to  the  courier, 
and  must  have  reached  Louis  XIV. 

But  the  letters  that  we  have  of  the  king  show  that 
this  extreme  piece  of  folly  was  not  needed  to  turn  him 
against  Mme.  des  Ursins.  The  complaints  against 
her  were  at  that  time  universal,  certainly  at  Versailles, 
and  at  a  distance  it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  those 
which  had  foundation  from  those  which  had  none. 
Judging  from  what  we  know  of  Louis  XIV's  mind,  he 
must  have  thought  it  an  amazing  thing  that  such  im- 
portance should  be  given  at  the  Spanish  Court  to  a 
woman  whom  he  had  placed  there  to  serve  him. 
Finding  resistance  in  his  grandson  and  the  young 
queen  to  Mme.  des  Ursins's  recall,  he  wrote  to  them 
in  the  tone  of  a  father  and  a  king: 

"  You  ask  my  counsel,"  he  says  to  Philippe  V,  "  and  1  write  you 
what  1  think;  but  the  best  counsels  become  useless  when  persons  wait 
to  ask  them  and  follow  them  until  after  the  harm  has  happened.  .  .  . 
Up  to  this  time  you  have  given  your  confidence  to  incapable  or  self- 
interested  persons.  .  .  ."  (Speaking  of  the  recall  of  Orry  and 
another  agent.)  "  It  seems  that  the  interest  of  those  particular  men  fills 


Ubc  iprincesse  ^cs  TDlrsins.  421 

your  mind  altogether,  and  while  it  ought  to  be  occupied  only  with 
great  views,  you  lower  it  to  the  cabals  of  the  Princesse  des  Ursins, 
with  which  1  am  incessantly  wearied." 

And  to  the  queen  Louis  XIV  writes  more  explicitly 
still: 

"  You  know  how  I  have  desired  that  you  should  give  your  confi- 
dence to  the  Princesse  des  Ursins,  and  that  I  neglected  nothing  to 
induce  you  to  do  so.  And  yet,  forgetting  our  common  interests,  she 
has  given  herself  up  wholly  to  an  enmity  of  which  I  was  ignorant,  and 
has  thought  only  of  thwarting  those  who  have  been  charged  to  con- 
duct our  affairs.  If  she  had  had  a  faithful  attachment  to  you  she 
would  have  sacrificed  her  resentment,  well  or  ill-founded,  against  Car- 
dinal d'Estrees,  instead  of  making  you  take  part  in  it.  Persons  like 
ourselves  ought  to  hold  themselves  above  the  quarrels  of  private  per- 
sons, and  conduct  themselves  in  accordance  with  their  own  interests 
and  those  of  their  subjects,  which  are  one  and  the  same.  It  was 
necessary,  therefore,  to  either  recall  my  ambassador  and  abandon 
you  to  the  Princesse  des  Ursins,  leaving  her  to  govern  your  kingdom, 
or  to  recal  Iher,  herself.  The  last  is  what  I  have  thought  it  my  duty 
to  do." 

In  these  words  so  firm  and  so  royal,  we  see  plainly 
the  true  cause  of  Louis  XIV's  displeasure;  and  Mme. 
des  Ursins's  marginal  note,  true  or  false,  is  only  a 
secondary  matter. 

The  great  king  thought  he  ought  to  take  extreme 
precautions  to  strike  a  blow  at  the  right  time.  He 
chose  a  moment  when  the  King  of  Spain  was  with 
the  army  and  separated  from  the  queen,  fearing  that 
the  latter  in  her  despair  would  throw  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  its  execution. 

I  send  to  the  fourth  volume  of  Saint-Simon  all  those 
who  would  admire  the  presence  of  mind  with  which 


422  Ubc  iprincesse  &es  lllrsins* 

Mme.  des  Ursins,  thus  suddenly  recalled  as  if  by  a 
thunder-bolt,  did  not  allow  herself  to  be  disconcerted, 
the  tranquillity  of  her  demeanour,  the  art  with  which 
she  managed  her  retreat  slowly,  in  good  order,  yield- 
ing the  ground  foot  by  foot,  without  affecting  to 
disobey,  but  taking  measures  to  provide  for  her  re- 
turn. After  a  first  stoppage  at  Toulouse,  from  which 
place  she  continued  to  correspond  with  her  royal 
pupil,  and  where  she  succeeded  in  warding  off  the 
exile  to  Italy,  she  received  the  much-desired  order  to 
go  to  Versailles,  and  from  that  moment  she  no  longer 
doubted  her  final  success  and  triumph. 

Arriving  in  Paris  January  4,  1705,  visited  imme- 
diately by  all  persons  of  consequence,  she  went,  eight 
days  later,  to  Versailles,  and  after  her  first  interview 
with  Louis  XIV,  it  was  evident  from  the  way  he 
treated  her  that  she  was  no  longer  an  accused  person, 
coming  to  render  account  of  her  conduct,  but  a  con- 
queror who  had  got  the  better  of  her  enemies.  We 
see  her  loaded  with  favours  and  marks  of  distinction, 
"such  as  no  subject  ever  had  before";  and  on  one  of 
the  trips  to  Marly,  Louis  XIV  did  her  the  honours  as 
if  she  were  "a  lesser  foreign  queen."  At  the  Marly 
balls  she  was  easy,  dignified,  unconstrained,  turning 
her  eyeglass  on  every  one;  at  one  of  the  balls  she 
carried  a  little  spaniel  in  her  arms  as  if  she  were  in 
her  own  house,  and  (what  was  still  more  remarked 
upon)  Louis  XIV  caressed  the  dog  several  times,  when 
he  returned  to  converse  with  her,  which  he  did  nearly 


Ube  iprincesse  C)es  XHrsins,  423 

all  the  evening.  "Never  was  any  one  seen  to  soar 
so  high." 

Mme.  des  Ursins,  who  had  imagination  and  was  a 
little  subject,  we  are  told,  to  being  dazzled,  may  have 
been,  during  these  months  of  favour,  slightly  intoxi- 
cated; but  it  is  certain  that  while  she  displayed  all  the 
charms  of  her  continual  and  inexhaustible  conversa- 
tion, she  keenly  appreciated  the  mind  of  the  king. 
She  returns,  in  her  subsequent  letters,  too  frequently 
to  the  subject,  and  enters  too  particularly  into  what 
she  discovered  in  him,  not  to  make  us  feel  on  her  part 
a  sincerity  deeper  than  flattery.  She  never  speaks  of 
the  king  except  as  "the  most  amiable  man  in  the 
world,"  the  "best  friend,"  the  "most  courteous  of 
men."  Some  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  suppose 
that  Mme.  des  Ursins's  views  went  farther,  and  that 
"the  age  and  health  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon  tempted 
her."  She  may  have  asked  herself  whether  the  pro- 
spect of  taking  her  place  in  France  were  not  better 
than  what  she  would  find  in  Spain.  But  these  are 
conjectures  too  easy  to  make  about  the  heart  of  a 
woman  and  quite  impossible  to  verify. 

What  seems  to  me  certain  is  that,  independently 
of  public  affairs,  she  obtained  a  personal  triumph  of 
mind.  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  Mme.  des  Ursins,  and 
Louis  XIV  were  for  some  time  under  one  and  the 
same  charm:  "I  often  recall  the  idea  of  you  and  of 
your  amiable  presence  that  charmed  me  so  at  Marly," 
writes  Mme.  de  Maintenon  a  year  later;  "do  you  still 


424  Ube  ipcincesse  Des  "Clrsins. 

retain  the  tranquillity  tliat  enabled  you  to  go  from 
most  important  conversations  with  the  king  to  the 
foolery  of  Mme.  d'Heudicourt  in  my  cabinet  ?  "  Mme. 
des  Ursins,  who  was  there  as  a  bird  of  passage,  de- 
lighted in  pleasing,  and  the  sense  of  success  redoubled 
her  charm.  Louis  XIV  was  fascinated  both  by  her 
grace  and  her  capacity.  He  had  expected  to  find  her 
a  belated  woman  of  the  Fronde;  instead  of  which,  he 
found  one  who  by  nature  was  fitted  to  be  a  person  of 
authority  and  government,  but  who,  for  all  that,  did 
not  cease  to  be  a  woman  of  delightful  social  art  and 
with  the  grandest  air.  With  her  as  a  third,  inter- 
course with  Mme.  de  Maintenon  became  rejuvenated. 
Of  the  three  personages,  if  I  may  venture  to  say  it, 
Mme.  des  Ursins  was  the  one  who  was  most  in  com- 
mand of  her  situation,  who  had  considered  all  points 
of  it  intelligently;  she  was  the  one  of  the  trio  most 
aloof  from  her  role,  and,  consequently,  she  played  it 
best. 

Once  re-established  in  Spain,  Mme.  des  Ursins, 
now  in  unison  with  Louis  XIV,  followed  a  more 
cautious,  regular,  and  really  irreproachable  course 
towards  those  who  had  sent  her  there.  The  letters 
that  she  writes  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  which  began 
immediately  after  her  departure  from  Paris,  if  they  do 
not  show  us  to  the  full  her  vigour  and  brilliancy,  at 
least  allow  us  to  divine  them;  and  they  give  us,  un- 
mistakably, the  principal  lines  of  her  character.  The 
mind  of  Mme.  des  Ursins  was  a  serious  mind,  practi- 


Zbc  iprincesse  Des  "Clrsins.  425 

cal,  a  little  cold  and  dry  at  bottom,  but  frank,  reso- 
lute, and  bold.  Unlike  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  she  had 
political  ideas;  she  dared  to  avow  them  and  push 
them  to  execution.  She  commits  herself,  before  all 
else,  to  the  complete  re-establishment  of  the  author- 
ity of  the  King  of  Spain.  Apropos  of  a  claim  set  up 
by  the  grandees  against  the  captains  of  the  guard, 
she  wishes  to  see  the  whole  cabal  of  the  nobles  (who 
are  profiting  by  the  weakness  of  the  new  regime  to 
create  titles  and  prerogatives  for  themselves)  broken 
up ;  otherwise  Spain  was  likely  to  fall  into  the  same 
difficulties  France  was  in  before  the  Fronde,  "in  the 
days  when  Frenchmen  did  nothing  but  thwart  one 
another."  She  is  of  opinion  that  the  leaders  of  that 
party  ought  to  be  made  to  feel  the  displeasure  of  the 
king  before  any  word  can  be  received  from  France;  so 
that  it  may  appear  to  be  a  resolution  taken  by  the 
King  of  Spain,  and  not  suggested  from  abroad. 

"  Do  not  feel  alarmed,  I  entreat  you,  madame,  at  these  resolutions," 
she  writes  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon;  "  it  is  fortunate  that  the  grandees 
have  given  us  so  good  an  occasion  to  humiliate  them.  They  are  proud 
men  v^fithout  force  or  courage;  they  are  working  to  annihilate  the 
authority  of  their  king;  I  am  furiously  angry  with  them  for  all  they 
have  done  since  they  entered  the  Council." 

This  virile  tone  carries  us  far  away  from  Mme.  de 
Maintenon.  A  thing  more  important,  in  Mme.  des 
Ursins's  opinion,  than  satisfying  the  grandees  is  to 
have  troops  and  find  means  to  pay  them,  after  which 
"  we  can  laugh  at  the  rest."     "Would  to  God,"  she 


426  TLbc  iprincesse  &es  XHrslns, 

exclaims,  "that  it  was  as  easy  to  get  the  upper  hand 
of  the  priests  and  the  monks,  who  are  the  cause  of  all 
the  revolts  that  you  hear  of !  " 

She  has  ideas  on  war  (I  do  not  say  they  are  the  best, 
but  she  has  them),  on  plans  of  defence,  and  on  the 
choice  of  generals;  she  states  them  all,  excusing  her- 
self from  arguing  upon  them,  but  she  argues  all  the 
same.  She  sees  dangers  in  advance,  lays  them  bare, 
and  spreads  them  out,  without  allowing  herself  to  be 
discouraged.  She  shows  the  Spanish  troops  such  as 
they  are,  the  important  fortresses  destitute  of  every- 
thing, "according  to  the  custom  of  Spain";  she  de- 
mands energetically  from  France  succour,  men,  and, 
after  vehemently  asking  in  the  body  of  the  letter  for 
big  battalions,  she  adds  in  a  postscript  that  she  has 
advised  the  King  of  Spain  to  order  prayers.  She 
has  little  flatteries  of  this  kind  suited  to  Mme.  de 
Maintenon. 

A  few  days  after  the  arrival  of  Marechal  de  Berwick, 
in  writing  to  thank  Mme.  de  Maintenon  for  that  suc- 
cour, she  speaks  of  Saint-Cyr,  knowing  that  nothing 
would  please  her  so  much,  and  well  aware  of  the 
"  weakness  of  mothers  " : 

"  The  queen  likes  your  '  Rules '  for  Saint-Cyr  very  much;  our  ladies 
v/ish  to  have  them,  and  I  am  having  them  translated  into  Spanish  to 
give  them  that  satisfaction.  If  her  Majesty  v^^ere  not  bound  by  very 
different  engagements  than  those  of  your  young  ladies  of  Saint-Cyr,  I 
really  believe  she  would  wish  to  be  one  of  your  pupils." 

The  flattering  creature  knows  how  to  say  just  the 


Ubc  iprtncesse  C>es  "Clrsins.  427 

proper  thing,  but  there  are  days  when,  displeased  to 
feel  that  Spain  is  being  neglected  and  abandoned  by 
Versailles,  she  is  frank  to  rudeness. 

One  of  her  finest  letters  is  addressed  to  M.  deTorcy, 
the  minister.  Going  back  to  the  principle  of  the 
Spanish  Succession,  Mme.  des  Ursins  shows  what 
basis  should  be  made  of  the  fidelity,  so  recent  in 
date,  of  the  Spanish  nation  to  the  House  of  Bourbon, 
and  what  was  the  true  political  lesson  of  it;  to- 
wards the  grandees,  to  prevent  the  division  of  the 
monarchy;  towards  the  people  of  the  provinces,  to 
sell  their  wool.  Those  who  desire  these  advantages 
from  France  will,  she  thinks,  decide  to  get  them  with 
the  archduke,  if  France  does  not  provide  them.  She 
ends  by  submitting  her  views  as  to  the  means  of 
defending  Spain  as  soon  as  possible  from  an  impend- 
ing invasion  from  Portugal,  and  also  from  Catalonia. 
Then,  after  having  said  all  that  she  had  in  her  heart, 
and  saying  it  boldly,  she  effaces  herself  in  a  skilful 
postscript  and  re-enters  her  feminine  role  of  lofty 
propriety. 

The  dangers  that  she  foresaw  were  realised  in  the 
campaign  of  1706;  the  Court  was  reduced  to  leave 
Madrid,  which  the  Portuguese  threatened  and  Ber- 
wick was  unable  to  protect.  The  miseries  and  inci- 
dents of  the  journey  across  the  still  faithful  provinces 
are  related  by  Mme.  des  Ursins  in  a  playful  tone.  She 
contents  herself  with  cheering  those  about  her,  con- 
soling them,  inspiring  firmness  and  a  sort  of  joy;  not 


428  Zbc  iprincesse  ^es  IHrsins. 

seeing  things  "in  black,"  but  obeying  her  easy  hu- 
mour and  a  certain  inclination  to  hope  that  came  to  her 
by  nature: 

"  It  often  happens,  madame,"  she  writes  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon, 
"  that  when  we  think  all  is  lost,  some  fortunate  event  occurs  to  change 
the  whole  face  of  things.  ...  I  turn  the  medal,  and  expect 
consolations  that  will  soften  our  troubles.  I  would,  madame,  that 
you  could  do  the  same,  and  that  your  temperament  were  your  best 
friend,  as  mine  is  the  one  on  which  I  can  best  rely.     .     .     ." 

Mme.  de  Maintenon,  who,  in  spite  of  her  excellent 
mind,  was  for  ever  tormenting  herself  and  lamenting, 
was  constantly  praising  her  for  a  natural  tranquillity 
that  she  envied,  for  her  courage  mingled  with  good 
humour,  and  for  "  the  fine  blood  that  left  nothing  sour 
or  gloomy  in  her."  It  was,  in  truth,  an  original  and 
most  distinctive  trait  in  Mme.  des  Ursins's  character 
that  she  was  a  person  so  tranquil  fundamentally  be- 
neath a  form  so  active,  and  through  a  life  so  agitated. 
It  was  to  this  that  she  owed,  after  her  great  fall  at 
seventy-two  years  of  age,  the  ability  to  rise  again  and 
die  in  peace  at  the  age  of  eighty.  But  there  are  still 
other  traits  in  her  nature  that  put  her  in  perfect  con- 
trast to  her  friend,  Mme.  de  Maintenon, 

When  we  read  the  letters  of  Mme.  des  Ursins  with 
those  of  Mme,  de  Maintenon  that  reply  to  them,  the 
natures  of  the  two  women  come  out  in  a  contrast  that 
they  themselves  are  the  first  to  feel  and  to  indicate, 
Mme,  de  Maintenon  affects  to  appear  less  than  she  is; 
she  likes  to  let  more  be  divined  than  she  shows;  she 
slips  aside,  seems  to  shun  notice,  makes  herself  small 


Ube  iprtncesse  t)es  THrsins.  429 

and  modest,  going  so  far  as  to  say  that  she  does  not 
know  how  to  deal  with  great  people.  Mme.  des  Ur- 
sins,  on  the  contrary,  very  willingly  puts  herself  for- 
ward, and  brings  all  her  person  into  play.  We  feel  at 
times  that  she  exceeds  her  limits  as  superintendent  of 
the  royal  interior,  for  she  does  not  fear  to  seem  to  step 
beyond  them,  and  let  something  be  seen  of  the  po- 
litical authority,  the  mainspring  of  which  she  holds  in 
her  hand.  She  likes  both  to  be,  and  to  appear  to  be. 
Their  ideal  of  the  future  is  different  and  marks  the  op- 
position of  their  natures,  although  ambition  may  not 
be  less  in  the  one  than  in  the  other.  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon,  sated  and  weary,  aspires  only  to  shut  herself  up 
at  Saint-Cyr,  as  an  impenetrable  refuge;  communicat- 
ing only  with  timid  and  submissive  young  girls,  rest- 
ing the  greater  part  of  the  day,  wrapped  in  veils  and 
hidden  behind  curtains.  The  greatest  act  of  her  queen- 
ship  that  she  clings  to  performing  is  to  seem  to  abdi- 
cate. Mme.  des  Ursins,  always  in  the  spirit  and  the 
enjoyment  of  public  appearance  and  power,  dreams, 
for  her  last  retreat,  of  a  tiny  State  of  which  she  should 
be  the  independent  sovereign;  where  she  could,  in  her 
leisure  hours,  govern  at  last  in  her  own  name,  and 
display  herself  in  the  sunlight  —  that  was  her  pof-a7i- 
lait,  her  true  castle  in  Spain.  Of  the  two  ambitions, 
the  one  that  played  the  modest  was  really  the  wiser ; 
the  other  seems  more  sincere :  but,  after  all,  these  were 
only  two  different  manners  of  playing  queen  when 
they  were  not  queens. 


430  'C;be  princesse  Des  "Clrsins* 

The  most  agreeable  part  of  this  Correspondence  is 
that  which  precedes  and  follows  the  victory  of  Al- 
manza.  That  victory,  gained  almost  in  spite  of  him- 
self, by  Marechal  de  Berwick,  April  17,  1707,  restored 
for  a  long  time  the  affairs  of  Philippe  V,  who  thus  re- 
conquered his  capital  and  a  good  part  of  his  kingdom. 
The  letters  of  Mme.  des  Ursins,  even  during  the  flight 
and  the  disasters,  breathe  courage  and  hope;  but  from 
that  moment  of  victory  they  take  a  marked  tone  of 
gaiety  and  brilliant  raillery,  which  shows  her  to  us  at 
her  best. 

The  account  of  the  joy  caused  at  Marly  by  the  news 
of  the  victory  of  Almanza  is  in  itself  a  living  picture. 
France  was  beginning  to  feel  unused  to  victories. 
The  preceding  year  had  seen  the  deplorable  and  disas- 
trous day  of  Ramillies;  reverses  alone  seemed  to  be 
expected.  Suddenly,  on  the  side  where  it  was 
least  expected,  the  news  of  victory  arrives.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  relates  to  Mme.  des  Ursins  the  first  effect 
produced: 

"You  know  Marly  and  my  apartment;  the  king  was  alone  in  my 
chamber,  and  I  had  just  sat  down  to  table  in  my  salon,  through  which 
every  one  passes;  an  ofificer  of  the  guards  cried  out  at  the  door  of  the 
room  where  the  king  was:  '  Here  is  M.  de  Chamillart!'  [Minister  of 
war.]  The  king  answered,  'What!  himself?'  because,  naturally,  he 
was  not  expected.  I  threw  down  my  napkin,  quite  agitated;  M.  de 
Chamillart  said  to  me,  '  It  is  good!'  and  entered  where  the  king  was, 
followed  by  M.  de  Silly,  whom  I  did  not  know;  you  can  believe, 
Madame,  that  I  entered,  too;  I  then  heard  of  the  defeat  of  the  enemy's 
army,  and  returned  to  my  supper  in  high  good  humour." 

This   little   scene,    very  well  related  by  Mme.   de 


TLbc  iprlncesse  ^es  "Clrsins*  431 

Maintenon  (I  have  slightly  abridged  it),  struck  the 
excited  imagination  of  Mme.  des  Ursins,  and  brought 
back  an  echo  that  makes  it  more  vivid  still: 

"All  that  you  represent  to  me,  madame,  from  the  officers  of  the 
guards  entering  to  announce  the  coming  of  M.  de  Chamillart,  while 
you  were  supping  in  your  salon,  till  the  king  went  to  the  door  him- 
self with  this  great  news,  seems  to  me  so  natural  that  I  think  1  see  you 
flinging  down  your  napkin  and  running  to  hear  what  was  told;  Mme. 
Dangeau  flying  to  write  to  her  husband;  Mme.  d'Heudicourt  walking 
about  as  if  she  had  good  legs  but  not  knowing  where  she  was  going; 
M.  de  Marsan  jumping  on  a  chair,  in  spite  of  his  gout,  with  as  much 
ease  as  if  he  had  been  a  rope-dancer.  As  for  Monseigneur  the  Due  de 
Bourgogne  who  is,  1  think,  a  little  subject  to  absent-mindedness,  1  am 
surprised  that  in  the  first  moments  of  his  joy  he  did  not  take  some 
lady  for  a  billiard-ball  and  give  her  a  stroke  with  the  cue  that  he  held 
in  his  hand." 

All  this  part  of  the  Correspondence  shows  these  two 
celebrated  women  much  to  their  advantage,  in  all  the 
vivacity  of  their  mutual  interests  and  in  full  accord. 
Mme.  de  Maintenon,  with  her  usual  preciseness,  adds 
to  this  impression  when  she  replies: 

"  I  have  just  reread  your  letters  to  see  if  I  have  replied  to  every- 
thing. Mon  Dieu !  Madame,  how  content  you  are,  and  how  play- 
fully you  jest!  There  is  never  any  blackness  in  what  you  say,  but 
now  there  is  a  joy  that  gives  me  all  the  joy  of  which  I  am  capable. 
To  render  it  complete  we  must  have  peace,  but  on  conditions  that 
will  satisfy  us." 

I  remark,  in  passing,  the  little  sentence:  "There  is 
never  any  blackness  in  what  you  say " — meaning 
sadness  for  blackness. 

This  peace,  of  which  the  timid  and  sensible 
Mme.  de  Maintenon  writes  incessantly,  became  in  the 


432  Ubc  iprincesse  &es  THrsins, 

following  years  a  stumbling-block  in  her  intercourse 
with  Mme.  des  Ursins,  who  is  much  less  eager  for  it, 
and  does  not  wish  it  at  all  except  on  the  best  condi- 
tions for  Spain.  Here  again  we  see  the  differences  in 
the  natures  of  the  two  women  defining  themselves 
clearly.  Mme.  des  Ursins  hopes,  even  in  extremity; 
she  is  not  of  those  who  abdicate  easily.  The  King 
and  Queen  of  Spain,  to  whom  she  had  devoted  her- 
self, have  lofty  sentiments,  "as  lofty  as  the  rank  in 
which  God  has  placed  them;  they  are  incapable  of 
base  acts.  They  have  resolved  to  lose  life  itself  rather 
than  do  aught  that  is  unworthy  of  what  they  are  "  — 
that  is  to  say,  they  will  defend  their  crown,  fighting 
until  death,  and  she  is  incapable  of  giving  them  any 
other  advice.  But  the  moment  comes  when  France 
despairs;  when  the  ministry,  especially,  inclines  to 
peace  at  any  price;  when  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  over- 
whelmed with  anxiety,  preaches  or  insinuates  the 
same.  The  consequence  of  this  discouragement  would 
be  the  abandonment  of  the  crown  of  Spain,  and  al- 
most the  dethronement  of  Philippe  V  by  his  grand- 
father, if  Louis  XIV  consented  to  it.  At  that  idea 
Mme.  des  Ursins  rebels,  her  courage  rises,  all  her 
blood  boils;  she  writes  letters  of  "fire  and  blood"  to 
Mme.  de  Maintenon,  turns  for  support  to  the  Spanish 
nation,  and,  aided  by  the  noble  queen,  flings  the  king 
resolutely  into  the  arms  of  his  subjects.  This  is  her 
finest  moment — the  moment  when  her  generosity, 
her  proud  soul,  her  courage,  and  the  resources  of  her 


Xtbe  iprfncesse  &es  TDlrsfns.  433 

mind  display  themselves  to  great  advantage,  and  turn 
to  the  public  good  as  much  as  to  her  honour.  The 
correspondence  with  Mme.  de  Maintenon  changes 
from  this  moment;  sharp  and  bitter  irony  comes  to 
the  surface. 

The  war  of  the  Spanish  Succession,  which  ambi- 
tion on  the  part  of  France  began,  and  which  ambition 
on  the  other  side  continued,  was  of  a  nature  which, 
up  to  that  time  and  for  many  previous  centuries,  was 
considered  extraordinary  and  stupendous,  whether 
from  the  military  or  the  historic  point  of  view.  A 
great  contemporaneous  mind  and  actor  in  those 
memorable  scenes,  Bolingbroke,  said  of  it:  "The  bat- 
tles, the  sieges,  the  surprising  revolutions  that  took 
place  in  the  course  of  this  war,  were  of  a  kind  the  like 
of  which  cannot  be  found  in  any  period  of  the  same 
length."  However  that  may  be,  it  was  certainly  per- 
missible in  those  days  of  disaster  to  differ  in  opinion 
as  to  the  remedy  and  the  means  of  coming  out  of  such 
overwhelming  evils.  Mme.  de  Maintenon  longed  for 
escape  like  a  woman,  and  like  too  many  of  the  men 
of  that  day;  like  a  woman  of  feeling,  who  sees  the 
evil  very  closely,  who  suffers  from  it  in  herself  and 
for  others  to  whom  she  is  attached,  who  has  nothing 
of  the  heroine  in  her,  who  is  wholly  resigned  and 
Christian,  seeing  the  hand  of  God  not  only  in  re- 
peated defeats  and  reverses,  but  even  more  directly  in 
the  natural  scourges  that  fell  upon  France,  such  as  the 
winter  of  1709  (the  severity  of  which  had  not  been 

VOL.  II. 28. 


434  XTbe  iprincesse  &es  'Qrsins* 

known  for  more  than  a  century),  and  in  the  famine 
that  followed  it,  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  in  view  of 
such  evils,  bows  her  head,  kneels  down,  and  —  pro- 
vided repose  and  relief  from  this  excessive  suffering 
come — does  not  recoil  before  any  necessity: 

"We  can  no  longer  make  war,"  she  writes  to  Mme.  des  Ursins: 
"  we  must  bow  our  heads  beneath  the  hand  of  God  when  he  wills  to 
overthrow  kings  and  kingdoms.  That,  Madame,  is  what  I  have 
always  feared.  .  .  .  We  have  experienced  a  succession  of  mis- 
fortunes such  as  France  cannot  recover  from  except  by  a  long  peace; 
and  famine,  the  worst  evil  of  all,  has  driven  us  to  our  last  straits.  I 
own  that  all  my  fears  never  went  so  far  as  to  foresee  that  we  should 
be  reduced  to  desire  to  see  the  King  and  Queen  of  Spain  dethroned; 
there  are  no  words,  Madame,  in  which  to  express  such  sorrow;  the 
King  is  filled  with  it." 

The  word  "dethroned"  is  uttered!  She  may 
afterwards  have  wished  to  retract  it,  but  Mme.  des 
Ursins  refers  to  it  perpetually,  and  never  forgave  it. 

Mme.  des  Ursins,  who  is  of  a  wholly  different  race, 
nurses  and  expresses  very  contrary  opinions.  She 
has  always  believed  that  the  resources  were  greater 
than  people  said,  if  only  the  men  were  not  so  dis- 
couraged; she  cannot  understand  those  generals 
(Tesse,  for  example)  who  distrusted  themselves,  and 
who  always  had  an  air  of  expecting  to  advance  to 
defeat.  She  is  of  opinion  that  "  nothing  can  be  done 
unless  it  is  undertaken."  She  fastens  to  Villars  and 
seems  to  divine  that  the  man  whom  everybody  called 
mad  was  destined  to  be  their  saviour:  "For,"  she  says, 
"  there  are  too  many  wise  men,  or  at  least  too  many 


Ube  iprincesse  t)es  XHrsfns.  435 

who  think  they  are  when  they  risk  nothing.  I  am 
persuaded  that  one  must  sometimes  let  risks  be  run, 
provided  they  are  not  pushed  to  temerity;  that  belongs 
only  to  heroes  of  romance."  This  last  defect,  she 
feels,  is  that  of  Villars,  but  she  pardons  it  in  him,  even 
in  the  midst  of  the  national  humiliation:  "  Marechal 
de  Villars  talks  and  acts,"  she  says,  "like  those 
heroes  of  romance  who  think  they  carry  victory 
wherever  they  go;  I  would  like  to  have  such  airs  here 
now,  so  opposed  to  those  who  are  dashing  us  over 
the  precipice." 

The  whole  Correspondence  of  Mme.  des  Ursins  dur- 
ing that  fatal  year  of  1709  redounds  to  the  honour  of 
her  generosity  and  the  loftiness  of  her  soul,  as  well  as 
to  her  perspicacity  of  judgment;  for,  at  the  last,  events 
proved  her  right;  the  throne  of  the  Bourbons  in  Spain 
remained  erect  without  causing  that  of  Louis  XIV  of 
France  to  be  much  lowered. 

A  gap  occurs  in  the  correspondence  of  the  two 
women  at  the  moment  when  it  cools  and  grows  bit- 
ter. Mme,  des  Ursins  requested  one  day  that  her 
letters  be  burned,  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  to  obey 
her,  seems  to  have  burned  a  part  of  them.  Those  lost 
letters,  very  curious  for  history,  must  have  been  less 
regrettable  for  charm  and  interest.  Mme.  des  Ursins 
makes  us  share  her  feelings  and  carries  us  with  her 
without  difficulty,  so  much  does  her  resistance  to  the 
peace  seem  a  direct  inspiration,  a  cry  of  patriotism  and 
honour;  we  not  only  pardon  her  obstinacy,  we  admire 


436  Ubc  princesse  &es  "drsins* 

it.  But,  so  soon  as  we  suspect  a  personal  ambition 
and  cupidity,  tiie  impression  becomes  quite  the  con- 
trary, and  her  noble  part  is  injured  in  our  eyes.  It  is 
certain  that  towards  the  end  of  this  bloody  period, 
and  during  the  slow  negotiations  that  closed  it,  she 
did  all  she  could  to  obtain  from  the  contracting  pow- 
ers a  sovereignty  of  her  own  in  the  Low  Countries. 
The  King  of  Spain  held  firmly  to  that  condition,  so 
indecorous  and  so  disproportioned  to  the  great  inter- 
ests involved;  he  refused  to  sign  the  peace  with  Hol- 
land unless  the  Dutch  not  only  placed  Mme,  des  Ursins 
in  possession  of  that  sovereignty,  but  agreed  to  guar- 
antee it  to  her  against  the  Emperor.  This  is  the  most 
serious  blame  that  can  be  laid  upon  the  memory  of 
Mme.  des  Ursins;  a  fault  of  conduct  through  vanity. 
She  deserved  that  Bolingbroke,  who  knew  her  weak- 
ness and  what  could  be  obtained  from  her  by  giving 
her  the  title  of  Highness,  should  remark,  during  the 
negotiations  of  that  period :  "  There  is  a  real  advantage 
for  us  in  flattering  the  pride  of  that  old  woman,  inas- 
much as  we  have  not  the  means  of  gratifying  her 
avarice."  This  affair  of  the  sovereignty  completed  the 
rupture  between  herself  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon. 
The  sound  and  judicious  mind  of  the  latter  recovers 
all  its  advantages  here;  her  modesty  would  never  have 
conceived  an  ambition  so  out  of  all  proportion,  her 
sense  of  fitness  would  never  have  allowed  her  to  com- 
mit such  a  blunder. 
The  catastrophe  that  hurled  Mme.  des  Ursins  from 


trbe  prlncesse  C>es  "drsins.  437 

her  high  position  remains  one  of  the  most  singular, 
most  dramatic,  and  most  unexplained  events  in  his- 
tory. We  know  that  the  charming  queen  to  whom 
she  belonged,  having  died  at  the  age  of  twenty-six, 
Philippe  V  instantly  desired  to  remarry.  Mme.  des 
Ursins  took  possession  of  him,  kept  him  under  a 
species  of  humilating  subjection,  and  chose  for  him, 
intentionally,  the  least  important  of  the  princesses  of 
Europe,  with  the  express  intention  of  creating  her  as 
if  by  her  own  hands,  and  forming  her  to  her  own 
interests. 

Elisabeth  Farnese,  Princess  of  Parma,  the  object  of 
this  choice,  and  chosen  only  because  Mme.  des  Ursins 
little  knew  her,  arrived  in  Spain.  The  king  advanced 
to  meet  her  on  the  road  to  Burgos,  and  Mme.  des 
Ursins  herself  went  on  from  there  to  the  little  town 
of  Xadraque.  When  the  new  queen  arrived  there, 
Mme.  des  Ursins  received  her  with  the  customary 
formalities.  Then,  having  followed  her  into  her 
apartment,  she  became  aware  that  the  queen's  tone 
instantly  changed.  Some  say  that  Mme.  des  Ursins, 
having  taken  exception  to  a  part  of  the  queen's 
dress  or  coiffure,  the  latter  treated  her  as  an  imperti- 
nent servant  and  became  very  angry.  Others  relate 
(and  these  different  accounts  supplement  one  another 
without  actually  conflicting)  that  Mme.  des  Ursins, 
having  protested  her  devotion  to  the  new  queen,  and 
assured  her  Majesty  "that  she  might  count  on  finding 
her  always  on  her  side  with  the  king,  to  maintain 


438  Ube  iprincesse  &es  "Clrsins. 

things  as  they  should  be  in  regard  to  her  and  to  pro- 
cure for  her  all  the  satisfactions  that  her  Majesty  had 
a  right  to  expect,  the  queen,  having  listened  quietly 
until  then,  took  fire  at  these  last  words,  and  replied 
that  she  needed  no  one  between  herself  and  the 
king,  that  it  was  impertinent  to  make  her  such  offers 
and  to  dare  to  speak  to  her  in  that  manner."  What 
is  certain  is  that  the  queen,  dismissing  Mme.  des 
Ursins  with  contumely  out  of  her  apartment,  sent 
for  M.  Amezaga,  lieutenant  of  the  body-guard,  who 
commanded  her  escort  of  honour,  and  ordered  him 
to  arrest  Mme.  des  Ursins,  put  her  instantly  into  a 
carriage,  and  take  her  to  the  frontier  of  France  by  the 
shortest  route  and  without  making  any  stop  by  the 
way.  As  M.  Amezaga  hesitated,  the  queen  asked 
him  if  he  did  not  have  a  special  order  from  the  King 
of  Spain  to  obey  her  in  everything  without  reserva- 
tion; and  it  was  true  that  he  had  it. 

Mme.  des  Ursins  was  therefore  arrested,  and  taken 
off  instantly  by  six  horses  across  Spain,  still  in  her 
Court  dress.  It  was  then  midwinter  and  she  was 
over  seventy-two  years  of  age.  A  waiting-woman, 
and  two  officers  of  the  guard  were  put  in  the  carriage 
with  her. 

"  I  know  not  how  I  have  borne  up  under  the  fatigues  of  this  jour- 
ney," she  writes  to  Mme.  de  Maintenon  eighteen  days  after  the  scene 
at  Xadraque.  "  I  was  made  to  sleep  on  straw,  and  to  fast  in  a  way 
very  different  from  the  meals  I  am  accustomed  to.  1  did  not  forget  to 
mention  in  the  details  1  took  the  liberty  of  writing  to  the  King  (Louis 
XIV)  that  all  1  ate  was  two  stale  eggs  a  day;  I  thought  that  circum- 


Ube  princesse  C)es  XHrsins.  439 

stance  would  excite  him  to  have  pity  on  a  faithful  subject  who  has  in 
no  way  deserved,  it  seems  to  me,  such  contempt.  I  am  going  to 
Saint-Jean-de-Luz  to  rest  awhile  and  hear  what  it  pleases  the  king 
shall  become  of  me." 

From  the  latter  town  she  writes  again,  still  to  Mme. 
de  Maintenon: 

"  I  shall  await  the  orders  of  the  king  here  at  Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 
where  I  am  living  in  a  little  house  near  the  sea.  I  see  it  often  agitated, 
sometimes  calm:  such  is  the  life  of  Courts;  that  is  what  1  have  known; 
that  is  what  has  happened  to  me;  that  is  what  excites  your  generous 
compassion.  I  readily  agree  with  you  that  we  can  find  no  stability 
except  in  God.  Certainly  none  can  be  found  in  the  human  heart,  for 
who  was  more  sure  than  1  of  the  heart  of  the  King  of  Spain  ?  " 

Everything  combines  to  show  that  it  was  the  King 
of  Spain  himself  who,  forgetting  the  long  services  of 
Mme.  des  Ursins  and  weary  of  her  rule,  from  which 
he  dared  not  free  himself,  gave  the  order  to  his  new 
wife  to  take  the  dismissal  on  herself;  and  she,  who, 
as  well  as  Alberoni,  her  adviser,  was  of  the  race  of  in- 
trepid gamblers  in  politics,  did  not  hesitate  a  moment 
in  making  for  her  first  essay  this  masterful  stroke. 
Elisabeth  Farnese  felt  herself  too  strong  a  personage 
to  exist  beside  Mme.  des  Ursins  on  the  same  stage. 

This  was  the  same  Elisabeth,  born  to  reign,  of  whom 
the  great  Frederick  said:  "The  pride  of  a  Spartan, 
English  obstinacy,  Italian  shyness,  and  French  vivacity 
made  up  the  character  of  that  singular  woman;  she 
marched  audaciously  to  the  accomplishment  of  her 
designs;  nothing  took  her  unawares,  nothing  stopped 
her."     Being  of  that  character,  it  is  not  surprising  that 


44°  XTbe  iprtncesse  Des  XHrsins. 

she  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  offered  her  to 
make  a  clean  sweep  on  her  first  arrival. 

Under  this  terrible  fall,  Mme.  des  Ursins,  the  first 
shock  over,  recovered  all  her  force,  all  her  self-posses- 
sion, and  her  apparent  composure;  not  a  complaint, 
not  a  reproach  came  from  her  lips,  nor  a  word  of 
weakness.  She  had  long  rendered  account  to  her 
own  mind  of  the  nothingness  of  human  life;  she  told 
herself,  seeing  her  enemies  triumphant  and  her  friends 
in  consternation,  that  there  was  nothing  to  be  sur- 
prised at;  that  the  world  was  but  a  comedy  in  which 
the  actors  were  often  very  bad;  that  she  had  played 
her  part  better,  perhaps,  than  others,  and  that  her 
enemies  ought  not  to  expect  her  to  be  humiliated  be- 
cause she  could  play  it  no  longer:  "It  is  before  God 
that  I  ought  to  feel  humiliated,"  she  said,  "and  I  do." 

After  quitting  France,  where  Louis  XIV  was  then 
dying,  and  where  the  Due  d'Orleans,  her  declared 
enemy,  was  about  to  be  master  and  Regent,  she  went 
to  live  in  Rome,  her  old  residence,  the  city  of  fallen 
grandeur  and  decent  disgrace.  From  long  habit,  she 
set  herself  to  govern  the  household  of  the  King  and 
Queen  of  England,  in  order  to  govern  something. 
There  she  witnessed  the  arrival,  overthrown  in  their 
turn,  of  more  than  one  of  those  who  had  caused  her 
downfall.  She  died  in  December,  1722,  at  more  than 
eighty  years  of  age. 

The  publication  of  official  papers  and  the  despatches 
of  French  ambassadors  during  the  period  of  Mme.  des 


Ube  iprincesse  Des  XHrsins*  441 

Ursins  in  Madrid  (if  that  publication  is  ever  made)  can 
alone  determine  with  precision  the  full  importance 
and  quality  of  her  political  action.  As  for  her  literary 
merit,  I  presume  to  say  that  Mme.  des  Ursins  only 
needs  less  negligent  editors  to  become  one  of  our  epis- 
tolary classics.  Her  letters  are  full  of  living  pages, 
which  give  us  not  only  the  manners  and  morals  of 
the  Court  of  Spain,  but  those  of  French  society  to- 
wards the  close  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  No  one 
really  knows  the  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne,  Mme.  de 
Caylus,  and  many  other  persons  of  agreeable  renown, 
until  they  see  them  daily  passing  in  and  out  through 
this  Correspondence.  In  spite  of  fortunate  and  choice 
exceptions,  it  is  plain  that  the  great  century  is  becom- 
ing corrupt;  the  young  women  of  that  day  are  grow- 
ing strange  in  manners  and  in  morals;  they  are  about 
to  be  the  women  of  the  Regency.  They  do  not 
yet  smoke,  as  they  do  to-day,  but  they  take  snuff. 
The  pretty  nose  of  Mme.  de  Caylus  is  daubed  wtih 
tobacco.  The  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne  sits  up  all  night, 
sups,  and,  from  the  advice  perpetually  given  to  her, 
appears  to  have  done  all  she  could  to  kill  herself. 
Mme.  des  Ursins,  who  thinks  Mme.  de  Maintenon  too 
severe  on  her  young  and  charming  relations,  especially 
on  Mme.  de  Noailles  and  Mme.  de  Caylus,  exhorts 
her  to  surround  herself  with  her  nieces,  who  would 
brighten  and  rejuvenate  her  life.  Whereupon  Mme. 
de  Maintenon,  with  her  most  piquant  rigidity  and 
rectitude   replies  —  and   it   is  clearly  understood  that 


442  u\)c  iprincesse  &es  "Clrsfns. 

what   follows  is  not  intended  to   apply  to  Mme.  de 
Caylus.  nor  to  Mme.  de  Noailles: 

"  You  lecture  me  on  strangers  and  on  my  relations:  I  own  to  you, 
madame,  that  the  women  of  these  days  are  intolerable  to  me;  their 
senseless  and  immodest  clothing,  their  tobacco,  their  wine,  their  glut- 
tony, their  coarseness,  their  laziness — all  that  is  so  opposed  to  my  taste 
that  it  seems  to  me,  and  with  reason,  that  I  cannot  endure  it.  I  like 
modest  women,  sober,  gay,  capable  of  serious  things  and  playfulness; 
polite,  jesting  with  jests  that  cover  praise,  whose  hearts  are  kind,  and 
their  conversation  lively  and  awake;  yet  simple-hearted  enough  to 
own  to  me  that  they  recognise  themselves  in  this  portrait,  which  I  have 
made  without  design,  but  which  I  think  very  just." 

It  is  indeed  Mme.  des  Ursins  whom  the  portrait  re- 
sembles in  her  best  moments;  certainly  in  its  principal 
features,  and  especially  in  that  of  "jests  that  cover 
praise."  That  is  the  method  of  charming  most  ha- 
bitual to  this  choice  spirit,  just  as  her  defect  was  a  turn 
for  too  frequent  irony  and  a  satire  that  was  carried  too 
far. 

I  had  the  intention,  in  writing  of  Mme.  des  Ursins, 
to  show  some  of  the  objections  to  political  women, 
of  whom  she  is  a  type,  for  all  that  such  women  can  be 
that  is  distinguished,  and  at  the  same  time  incom- 
plete, excitable,  ostentatious,  and  vain.  The  subject 
studied,  1  have  not  the  courage:  she  rendered  real  ser- 
vices and;  we  are  glad  to  take  her  as  we  find  her,  able 
and  skilful  in  difficult  conjunctures.  Still,  in  uniting 
these  two  personages  of  notable  appearance  before 
the  world,  Mme.  des  Ursins  and  Mme.  de  Maintenon, 
these  two  able  women  of  the  first  order,  may  I  be 


XTbe  iprlncesse  &es  THrslns*  443 

permitted  to  recall,  upon  the  background  of  an  earlier 
period,  behind  and  below  them,  the  figure  of  a  simple 
spectatress  of  the  comedy  of  a  Court;  a  person  who 
had  no  genius  of  intrigue  or  of  action,  but  a  sound, 
equable  good  sense,  gentle  and  delicate,  a  calm,  safe 
judgment,  the  wise,  sincere,  and  virtuous  woman  of 
those  Court  regions  —  Mme,  de  Motteville. 


French  History. 


Old  Court  Life  in  France.  By  Frances  Elliot. 
New  edition,  2  vols.,  8°.  With  60  photogravure 
and  other  illustrations        .        .        .        Net,  $5.00 

'•  Mrs.  Elliot's  is  an  anecdotal  history  of  the  French  Court  from 
Francis  I.  to  Louis  XIV.  She  has  conveyed  a  vivid  idea  of  the 
personalities  touched  upon,  and  her  book  contains  a  great  deal  of 
genuine  vitality." — Detroit  Free  Press. 

Woman  in  France  During  the  Eighteenth  Cent- 
ury. By  Julia  Kavanagh,  author  of  "  Madeline," 
etc.  Illustrated  with  portraits  on  steel.  2  vols., 
8° $4.00 

"  Miss  Kavanagh  has  studied  her  material  so  carefully,  and  has 
digested  it  so  well,  that  she  has  been  able  to  tell  the  story  of  Court 
Life  in  France,  from  the  beginning  of  the  Regency  to  the  end  of  the 
Revolutionary  period,  yf\t\\.  an  understanding  and  a  sobriety  that 
make  it  practically  new  to  English  readers." — Detroit  Free  Press. 

France  Under  Mazarin.  By  James  Breck  Perkins. 
With  a  Sketch  of  the  Administration  of  Richelieu, 
Portraits  of  Mazarin,  Richelieu,  Louis  XIII.,  Anne 
of  Austria,  and  Conde.     2  vols.,  8°    .         .         $4.00 

"A  brilliant  and  fascinating  period  that  has  been  skipped,  slighted, 
or  abused  by  the  ignorance,  favoritism,  or  prejudice  of  other  writers 
is  here  subjected  to  the  closest  scrutiny  of  an  apparently  judicial  and 
candid  student.     .     .     ." — Boston  Literary  World. 

A  French  Ambasssador  at  the  Court  of  Charles 
II.,  Le  Comte  de  Cominges.  From  his  unpub- 
lished correspondence.  Edited  by  J.  J.  Jusserand. 
With   10  illustrations,   5   being  photogravures.      8°, 

I3-50 
"  M.  Jusserand  has  chosen  a  topic  peculiarly  fitted  to  his  genius, 
and  treated  it  with  all  the  advantage  to  be  derived,  on  the  one  hand, 
from  his  wide  knowledge  of  English  literature  and  English  social 
life,  and  on  the  other,  from  his  diplomatic  experience  and  his  free- 
dom of  access  to  the  archives  of  the  French  Foreign  Office.  .  .  . 
We  get  a  new  and  vivid  picture  of  his  (Cominges')  life  at  the  Court 
of  Charles  II.  .  .  .  There  is  not  a  dull  page  in  the  book."— 
London  Times. 


O,  p.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and  London 


French   History. 

Jeanne  d'Arc,  the  Maid  of  France.     By  Mrs.  M.  O. 
W.  Oliphant.     No.  17  in  the  Heroes  of  the  Nations 
Series.     Fully  Illustrated.     Large  12°         .         $1.50 
"  Mrs.  Oliphant  has  written  a  charming  book.     The  style  is  pleas- 
ant and  simple.     The  reader  is  carried  from  page  to  page  without 
the  consciousness  of  fatigue.     The  little  maid  of  Dom  Remy  has  had 
many  a  biographer,  but  none  more  loving  and  sympathetic  than  our 
present  writer." — N'.   Y.  Observer. 

Henry  of  Navarre,  and  the  Huguenots  in  France.    By 

P.   F.  WiLLERT,    M.A.,    Fellow  of   Exeter  College, 

Oxford.      No.  9  in  the  Heroes  of  the  Nations  Series. 

Fully  illustrated.     Large  12°       .         .         .         $1.50 

"  There  was  room  for  a  bright,  popular  history  of  that  remarkable 

warrior  and  monarch,  Henry  IV,  of  France.     This  want  has  been 

well  supplied  by  Mr.  Willert,  who  has  issued  a  volume  of  less  than 

500  pages,  which  exhibits  excellent  grip  of  the  subject,  and  still  more 

excellent  discrimination  in  the  dramatic  representation  of  the  central 

character." — Boston  Transcript. 

Louis  XIV.,  and  the  Zenith  of  the  French  Monarchy. 
By  Arthur  Hassall,  M.  A.,  Student  of  Christ  Church 
College,  Oxford.      No.  14  in  the  Heroes  of  the  Na- 
tions Series.     Fully  illustrated.     Large  12°    .    $1.50 
"  The  author  of  this  volume  has  well  and  impartially  performed 
his  task.     His  style  is  elegant,  and  at  the  same  time  graphic  and  full 
of  force.     His  book  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  student  of  his- 
tory, and  it  will  be  welcomed  and  valued  as  it  deserves." — A^.  Y. 
Christian  Work. 

Napoleon,  Warrior  and  Ruler,  and  the  Military  Suprem- 
acy of  Revolutionary  France.  By  W.  O'Connor 
Morris.  No.  8  in  the  Heroes  of  the  Nations  Series. 
Fully  illustrated.  Large  12°  .  .  .  $1.50 
"The  book  is  certainly  the  best  modern  account  of  Napoleon  in 

the  English  language." — London  Academy. 

Ambroise  Pare,  and  His  Times,  15 10-1590.  By 
Stephen  Paget,  M.A.  Illustrated.  8°  .  $2.50 
Mr.  Paget  tells  the  story  of  the  life  of  the  great  French  surgeon 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  Ambroise  Fare's  life  was  so  full  of  good 
works,  adventure,  and  romance,  that  it  ought  to  be  known  and 
honored  in  other  countries  besides  France. 


Q.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and  London 


K 


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